JEFFREY
GOODMAN
As a filmmaker,
Jeffrey is first and foremost a
cinephile. He never went to film school but rather took the Tarantino approach,
watching as many movies as he could and deciding along the way the type of films
he wanted to make. More than anything, he wants to make films that he would
enjoy going to see himself. And the best way he can describe those movies is to
steal a phrase from Pauline Kael, former critic for The New Yorker. Kael coined
the term "movie art" and used it to describe those movies that both entertained
her and forced her to think. That fine balance of entertainment and stimulation
is what he seeks from the movies and one of the qualities that jumped out at him
when he first read The Last Lullaby.
Along the way, Jeffrey has also become
a bit of a film history buff or film geek (as some have been known to call him.)
He loves learning about the cinema's different movements and transformations
and wondering what directions the medium might veer off in next. Part of him
would even love one day to think he was responsible for pushing the cinema
forward, albeit ever so slightly.
Jeffrey ended up raising all the money
for Lullaby himself, selling the film in $50,000 units to private
investors in his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana. He believed it would take
this level of freedom to make a movie that he felt was slightly different than
most things currently being made.
"With Lullaby, I wanted to do certain things that weren't necessarily in
fashion. I wanted to make a slow, quiet genre piece that was sincere (rather
than ironic) and very human. And, in many ways, I wanted to make it in the
naturalistic style that I associated with some of my favorite American films
from the seventies.
To me, this naturalistic style required several things:
1. The film needed to get away from wall to wall music and let the natural
sounds of the locations drive the scenes.
2. We needed to shoot on actual locations, rather than on a stage.
3. And, the characters needed to dress in normal clothes and look like real
people rather than like perfect movie stars."