There's Only One Timeline
Hey guys! Today we’re back with another great conversation.
This time I spoke to filmmaker and musician Taylor Cohan. Taylor makes strange, eternal films that seem to run by their own unique logic and, as of late (and for the foreseeable future), are scored by him too, adding a distinct, fuzzy, bubbling texture to the worlds he creates in his films.
Much like how many of Taylor’s films seem to exist in some other plane that we as audience members are used to, I fell into Taylor’s portal of work via Instagram, where he had shared the first half of his latest short film Vibrations. Eager to find out how the rest of the film ended, I found his work on Vimeo and also continued watching some of his other great shorts. I urge you to travel down the Taylor Cohan rabbit hole.
Eager to learn more about the person who made this compelling work, I sat down and had a conversation with him.
Topics discussed:
what happens when you make movies to a metronome
how day jobs can influence artists’ work
what makes Mickey Mousing so great
how Craiglist actors are amazing for scoring
that lately conspiracy theories are more inspiring than movies
a behind the scenes look at Taylor’s next project, a feature film
WILL DINOLA: So what have you been up to today?
TAYLOR COHAN: I’ve been working.
WD: What do you do for work?
TC: Is this part of the interview?
WD: I’m always curious if people are doing their artistry full time versus if they have other day jobs. If you don't want to include that kind of thing, you don't have to. But also if you are okay with sharing it, then that's cool too.
TC: I’m less interested in that with myself because I have a day job and it’s uninteresting. I do targeted advertisements for social media ads.
WD: Are you in the editing side of building them or the strategy stuff?
TC: It's data stuff too, but it's still like from a video production standpoint to a degree.
WD: What do think of yourself as? Because I know you score your work, which is one of the main reasons that I wanted to speak with you, because I do composing and some filmmaking as well, so I'm just curious, what do you think of yourself as [artistically speaking]?
TC: I’ve not scored all of my shorts, but I do score my work and I will score all of my work going forward. Like, the farting one, I didn’t score.
I definitely enjoy the process of playing music more than I do filmmaking, just like as a source of like immediate pleasure, right? But, all in all I definitely see myself as a filmmaker and I see scoring my own films as a tool that I can use as a director.
Before Vibrations, during COVID and a little before that, my time in LA, so in the last like four years, I started to focus way more on music.
So initially the idea for Vibrations was just to make a movie to put my music into it, to get more eyes on the music. [Before] that point I was the least interested in movies. But then, while making [Vibrations], I kind of fell in love with movies again and now I'm pretty all in on film, not really making music as much anymore, though I will score my own films moving forward.
Other people seem to respond less to my music than my movies, in general. Which doesn’t really matter, but it does to a degree too. I'm able to express my thoughts more in film than I can through music, which is the most important thing. Even though like sometimes I do find the process of making movies really frustrating. I haven't made a feature yet. It's incredibly difficult to make a movie.
I like that you can just make music by yourself in your house. But after working on some music thing, I don't really go back. There's songs that I've just like lost online, I can't even find anymore.
But my movies I do [go back to] after the fact, [and] I can see exactly what I was thinking and feeling in that moment. I'm way more attached to the movies that I've made than I am to the music that I've made.
WD: With music, you’re only [using] one sense. [With movies] you have more senses involved, which maybe helps hone in on a specific memory or mindset.
With Vibrations it felt like the music was such a huge piece of the work. You were saying that you were intending to make that in order to have something to score to, to have somewhere to present your music. But from an artistic practice, how has it evolved now? When you are generating ideas are you starting from a music nugget that’s generating into a visual and then that’s spawning the next film idea? Or is it the other way around?
TC: Right now I’m writing a feature. The next thing I make, I want to be a feature film. So I'm not really thinking about the music as much. I know I will score it.
For Vibrations, the initial idea was to make something to score and I also had some very specific film technique things like oh the whole thing's gonna be edited in tempo.
WD: Meaning that you you cut it to a metronome, is that what you're saying? A specific beats per minute?
TC: To a certain BPM. Every sound is in tempo too, to a BPM, just for one sequence.
Because I'm working on a feature now, everything I've tried in the past will probably be in that, because it's kind of all practice for that to a degree. This is more narratively focused than that from the onset, so I'm not really focused on the music, but I'm sure there will be a scene or two in that movie where I do use all of the musical ideas that inspired Vibrations.
I scored a couple of movies in college. Then when I lived in New York, I didn't score any. Then I scored the one I made before this in LA. Then Vibrations.
Vibrations is the first one where I edited and scored simultaneously and went back and forth, which is something I think I would continue to do. If you have someone else editing it and then you score it, that's a very different process than if you're editing and scoring yourself.
WD: Totally.
TC: It gives a lot more freedom if you're editing and scoring yourself.
On the next movie, I'm not sure if I would be the editor just because it's such a massive undertaking, but I would be scoring simultaneously and going back and forth. I might send some score that has very clear moments where a note hits where I want the image to change, but then I might remove that note so you start to get rhythmic video [cuts] that are still musical.
So you really can start to do an accent that you [might] do musically [as a visual edit]. I think music videos kind of do that, but they do it less than you would think. “Mickey Mousing” stuff, I guess is what I'm talking about.
WD: Mickey Mousing is an interesting thing I've written about a little bit because we're pretty far into the history of cinema and so there's all these conventions that are kind of outdated now, [what] to most audiences seem cheap. But it is fun to find that balance of what you can get away with in terms of the Mickey Mousing.
TC: I've always been really into Mickey Mousing, like in the first film class I ever took, in high school or something, the teacher didn’t know how to describe things being cheap, so the way they said that was like oh it's cheating.
Since then, I have thought of it like oh, you can make people feel whatever you want. Because maybe the score is pushing an emotion that’s very different than what the dialogue is. Or to me it’s the emotion I’m feeling, but someone else wouldn’t know to feel that without the score, because the dialogue is more abstract. It’s very informative in that sense.
WD: It’s a great thing and a challenging thing about scoring in general. You do have a lot of power. Especially because what I find so interesting about your films is I love all of the actors you seek out. A lot of the performances are… they’re very “blank canvas.” In terms of you who’s scoring it, it’s like the [actor] is kind of a default. It feels like this very default way of delivering material.
TC: Absolutely. With some of the performances you could completely change the meaning of the scene [based] on the music. I really enjoyed that for sure.
WD: I don't know if it's why you gravitate towards those types of performances or [if it’s] a kind of a happy accident. I’m curious where that arose, because it does seem very fruitful [on] the scoring end.
TC: I think part of it is just my writing. It depends on the movie. There’s some that push it further than others. Sorry For Farting pushes it probably the furthest of all of them in terms of just being Craigslist actors.
I think my writing is a bit stilted and I don't mind that. And then it’s knowing how to work with that after the fact.
I think for a couple of the movies, when I was in New York, if I was trying to make it super cheap, it was leaned into more because it was like, if I'm going to have a certain number of actors that are off Craigslist, they might as well all be, or have it be a mix and then the regular actors will push the performance more in that direction. There needs to be a consistent tone throughout. This is also why realism is hard, if you're trying to go for something more natural and then you get one person who is really bad, your movie is kind of ruined. But I don't think my movies can be affected by a bad actor really at all.
WD: Yeah, it's kind of a hack.
TC: So I think it's partially the situations I've made the movies in intentionally and partially my writing is just like that.
WD: I know you’re focusing on a feature right now, but do you have an artistic practice you’re trying as much as possible to stick to? Writing, directing, [or] music?
TC: I'm not doing any filmmaking stuff right now. I'm not editing at all on a day-to-day basis. I have edited for jobs in the past, but I'm not for work right now.
It's hard to stay practiced in your filmmaking. It's important to stay practiced in your writing.
The music has fallen by the wayside more than it should, but I still do it. But I also think scoring a movie and playing music are totally different things. I haven't scored a movie since Vibrations, so I will be rusty for sure when the time comes. I'm really disorganized, so there's no regiment. But also, I'm approaching mid 30s and no feature film… so it's important to be regimented.
WD: Yeah, I'm always curious what people are doing. I mean, I know it's a constant struggle for everyone, myself included.
TC: I tend to, when I'm working my best, obsess [over] one thing. That being writing: I'll just be writing for like a couple of days. Vibrations post-production: being scoring and editing, those were the only things.
WD: I'm curious [about] what you were saying, how making music and scoring are very different.
TC: There's just so much less space in a score. You need to give the movie room. You just need to be way more conscious of this other thing.
WD: You’re not necessarily limited, because [scoring] can bring out other [ideas] than just making the music on your own might not bring out, but you just have to be conscious of [the film].
TC: There's a clear goal too, which is to enhance the feeling within [a movie], whereas a song can have a bunch of different things going on.
WD: Something that I also have found is different is when you're making music that's on its own, it always feels like it's harder to know when it's finished. But for a score, I can tell. I don't know if you've found this in your work or not, but I have an easier time feeling: this is working and that I don't need to tinker any longer.
[laughs] A director can just tell you straight up [too].
TC: I'm probably quicker to end anything than I should be, but definitely with scoring a movie, there's a moment where it's very clear. Whereas with a song it's kind of, Oh, should I add one more thing there?
I'm not one to keep toying with that “one more thing” too much in the songs. I probably should do it more.
WD: You said after Vibrations you’ve been like, I’m scoring the rest of my work. Is that something you weren't considering before?
TC: I just think there's stuff that I would never be able to describe to someone else scoring my movie. Sorry For Farting and this other movie I made Flushing were scored by this musician Sarah Lipsate. She went by the title Noveller back a while ago. She’s incredibly talented.
But then there’s still just this layer of how well do I have to understand music to be able to communicate what I want? And if I [can] understand music that well to communicate it, I could probably just do it [myself] at that point.
I think the scores for those movies are great but there's also just things you can't ask someone to do.
If you're trying to do something unique, it's easier if it's one person across all the [roles]. It gives you more opportunity to do new things, because you can think about things in a holistic way.
WD: Vibrations’ music kind of has a sound design element, a sound effects feel [is] very much a part of the music. There's this fluidity with it. It makes sense with the process. That result seems a lot harder to get to with multiple different people doing it.
“I don’t think my movies can be affected by a bad actor really at all.”
WD: You’re working on this feature [though]. Do you have other collaborators that you’re working with at this stage?
TC: I'm co-writing with my friend, Jesse Lair. I have a friend who's a producer on it, but there's nothing to produce at the moment. I’m making the feature off the short of mine Psychic Cheerleaders. So it’s that 10-year-old concept and trying to bring it back to life.
WD: Cool. I guess what we’ll end on is what’s inspiring you or what other artists are inspiring you a lot right now?
TC: Saw Challengers, really loved. Cool score too. Funny though, because the score is very dramatic. Have you seen it?
WD: I haven’t seen it. I’m excited to see it.
TC: I'm really into conspiracy theories in general, outside of movies, like paranoia and that stuff. During Vibrations I got really into Thomas Pynchon. I hadn’t read any of his books and read a bunch over COVID.
WD: I'm reading Mason & Dixon right now.
TC: I didn't get through Mason & Dixon.
WD: It's a slog. I'm basically just picking it up like every once in a while and enjoying it. But I always have to read like the Wikipedia plot recap of each chapter like, wait what actually happened this chapter? but it's still enjoyable.
TC: They speak old-timey in that one.
WD: It’s crazy.
TC: I’ve seen movies that I like, but nothing that’s popping to my head that’s hyper influential. I think most of the things influenced me when I was younger. The influences are there to a degree.
WD: I think you might be interested in this conspiracy theory. I just read a book called Bitten, which is about how Lyme disease was accidentally created by the US government.
TC: On that military base. I don't know anything about that conspiracy theory other than that there's a military base where Lyme started and there was chemical testing there.
WD: They were literally injecting ticks with different diseases and dropping them over Cuba and different areas in the US. It's crazy.
TC: Dude, have you seen Wormwood, the Errol Morris doc on Netflix?
WD: No, I haven’t.
TC: It’s actually pretty good. It’s on this guy Frank Olson who is a CIA biochemist guy who was revealing us using chemical weapons in the Korean War. He's suicided out of a window but it's very clear he's thrown out the window and his son's been searching for justice the whole time. But then there's another documentary on Frank Olson that the son made earlier, before the Errol Morris one, in which he talks about them driving down the pacific coast highway and shooting anthrax out of the car to see if you could do airborne anthrax. They just dumped a bunch of different poison agents on San Francisco because they were like, we'll see if people get poisoned, we'll see if it's absorbable through the air. Really crazy shit.
So I’m really interested in conspiracy theories right now more than anything.
I appreciate you taking the time to talk.
WD: I really enjoyed this. I really like your work a lot and it was very striking also, for whatever reason [I discovered Vibrations and your work] just seeing it pop up on Instagram.
TC: Yeah, that’s really funny.
WD: And also, it was like half of [the movie].
TC: Yeah I uploaded it, then if you close Instagram it finishes the upload or something so there’s only 13 minutes or something.
WD: And so I was like, this is great, I gotta go find the other half.
TC: I mean, that’s awesome. The internet sometimes feels very empty. You put these things up here, you just see numbers. It is cool that those numbers are real people sometimes, right?
will dinola (he/him) is a film composer, musician, and writer currently working in new york city
he is interested in people’s passions and pushing the art of film scoring to new horizons
he writes about his experience in a newsletter called “do”
