Quality over Quantity

Quality of Life Director Benjamin Morgan on
D.I.Y. Film, Vandalism and Reading the Writing on the Wall

By Alma Rose Villarreal

Quality of Life follows the lives of two San Francisco graffiti writers in their mid-20s who get busted for writing on public property. One enters a graffiti abatement program while the other grapples with the reality of his situation, living his life the only way he knows how. Simultaneously touching on the interpersonal relationships of the protagonists and their respective environments, Quality of Life gives graffiti a face and a voice. Director Benjamin Morgan hopes his film, at the very least, will spark debate.

How did you come about the title Quality of Life? Is there any significance to it?
We really wanted to tell a human story that was universal. We didn’t want to make a documentary or make it uniquely about graffiti in any way. There are definite underlining themes that are universal about friendship and about struggling. The title is based on the “Quality of Life” laws originally started by [ex-Mayor] Ed Koch in NYC like 20 years ago. Basically, they lumped together prostitution, drugs and graffiti and called them “Quality of Life” offenses. They wanted to eradicate these offenses and clean up the city. They didn’t address the root causes such as homelessness, unemployment or anything. It was just about attacking the symptoms.
Nothing exemplifies everything that is wrong with the justice system to me better than graffiti, because they are literally painting over the problem. They’re not addressing root causes in any way. You cannot paint over the problem and think it’s going to just go away. Here we are, 30 years later from when the graffiti movement was really born and nothing has been eradicated, it’s more popular than ever. By naming the film Quality of Life, we allowed ourselves to have this subtle political dialog. We really want to engage in a dialog and make some progress on this debate.

I had no idea how intense the laws were until I watched your film. It really got me thinking about the relevance of the punishments in relation to the crimes. Are these laws truly helping to reform writers? Or are they further marginalizing and compounding the issues these kids are acting out on?
I’m not trying to take a stance on whether graffiti is good or bad. If you write on someone else’s property it is vandalism. You are breaking a law. One of the actors, Dave Lieberman was facing like 18 to 20 months in state prison. I don’t mean like a ranch or rehab or probation— like state prison, where rapists and murderers go.
Yes, okay, punishments are appropriate, but state prison? Like come on, it’s totally inappropriate. If Dave would’ve gone to prison, he wouldn’t have been reformed. Maybe it would have sent a message, “oh shit, don’t write on other people’s property you go to prison.” Maybe that’s what they were trying to do? It still goes back to failing to address the root problem: why are these people writing their names on walls? My friends who do write are disenfranchised. There is a large marginalized population, whatever their ethnicity, and they are striving for artistic and creative outlets. For many of them writing is an act of rebellion.

There are a lot of live action art pieces thrown up in your film. How did you deal with filming, obtaining permission, etcetera, for the graf writing scenes? Did you contract artists?
Brian [Burnam, “Vain”] painted his own stuff and Lane [Garrison, “Heir”] had a stunt double, Bryan Dawson, who did stuff. In terms of getting permission, I don’t think I can go on record for that one, but for the most part, we had permission. I mean homies had walls that they would paint every six months, but there were moments that we had to do what we had to do to make it happen.

Was the city of San Francisco supportive of your film considering the subject matter? When it came time to obtain permits and the like, were there brick walls or any unnecessary red tape?
It’s funny ‘cause I do bitch and moan a lot on how the city has failed to support indie filmmakers in general. But we were fortunate in that some people on our crew had connections at the SF film commission. The commission was actually really helpful and supportive. We did take a really low profile, though. It was about graffiti so we didn’t actually seek press, which would’ve been good for fundraising. There was a definite culture of paranoia at the time we were filming this. There were warrants out for like a dozen people’s arrest, Dave was going to court and the city was hot! So we weren’t seeking too much support, but they helped us out with permits and helped paved the way for us.

So outside of the obvious hometown connections, why film in SF? Why not somewhere like NY or LA?
I get that question a lot, and I don’t really have an answer for you. I just had to do it. I was born here. It’s my city. There were some times when producers would say, “it would be easier to shoot this scene in Oakland, it would be cheaper, blah, blah, blah,” and I was like, “no, this needs to be shot in the Mission. Not just in SF, in the Mission.”

How did you go about financing the film? On the credit card tip, private investors, donations?
We definitely lived on credit cards to support ourselves. We didn’t sink our money into it ‘cause we knew we were going to go broke just making it. We raised money from private investors, mostly friends and family. Sam Flores, Bigfoot, Kelly Tunstall and Andy Schoultz all came out and donated art for this huge auction at the Punch Gallery. We raised like 6,000 bucks which was huge for us; we bought our film stock with that. It kicked off the whole production. We scraped and pinched, raised money for film stock and food.

What about distribution? Are you just traveling with the print everywhere you go?
Yeah, it’s really hard work but we are learning so much. We started our distribution company, Relentless Co., with blood, sweat and tears. If a distro company just picked us up, we wouldn’t have learned all this shit. It’s been really valuable.

So what do you want people to know about your film? I’m curious to hear what you’d like to add that we didn’t cover already?
This film is 100 percent independent. There are no ties to Hollywood. We made it completely by ourselves, and we hope that in some way we can inspire other people who are trying to create art, be it music or art or film or whatever, that you can do it. Do it yourself, do it your way…and fuck everyone else.

I think it’s important people realize that too, because people’s understanding and definitions of the word “independent” can be extremely varied.
Oh, man, I have to jump in on this one. We were on the indieWire charts. Variety is the big Hollywood movie paper and indieWire is like the “independent” version. We were #6 our opening week for per screen average, right behind that film Capote. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is in it. People are already talking about Oscars. The other films on there are all Warner Independent and Fox and Sony that have “indie” divisions. How are we on the same chart as them? I think maybe five or 10 years ago that wasn’t the case. But now they call it Indiewood.

Yeah, like some “we’re indie but we have a 600K budget” shit.
Exactly! More like $6 million budget, it’s no joke. What they made their trailers for we could have made like 10 movies. It’s just a different world, and here we are competing against them. I was having this conversation with someone at the theater about a week ago and we look out the window and a bus pulls up and it’s got Green Street Hooligans on the side. That film is playing in the same theater as us and we are like, “Dude, we don’t have a bus…we got kids on the street in the Mission and in the Haight with flyers. We don’t have billboards and TV ads.” Our promo has been 100 percent grassroots from day one.

Real talk! Any last words?
We have a guerilla marketing campaign going on here. We have so many people helping us on a grassroots level—you can sign up and contact us if you are down to help promote the film.

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