I believe Matt Amato is one of the most interesting people in St. Louis. I met him several years ago, just after he had moved back to the city, taking up residence on Cherokee Street above the old Aisle One Gallery at Texas Street. Amato had chosen that location for a remarkably simple reason: the apartment sat right in the middle of the 50 filming locations for The Makings of You, which he now is hoping to be released in 2018. Several years ago, Amato and I drove around St. Louis and the Metro East, learning about the different South Broadway watering holes, quiet streets in Hyde Park or long forgotten parks along the Mississippi featured in The Makings of You. I met up with Amato recently at Frankly on Cherokee Street to see what he has been up to in the last few years and his plans for the future.
Seeking the real St. Louis: Scouting locations for The Makings of You
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Much of the previous year was taken up with Amato’s involvement in I Am Heath Ledger, documentary of his close friend and collaborator. He was reluctant at first, as Ledger valued his privacy. But finally, Amato agreed, and as an executive producer contributed to the cast selection, additional shooting, editing process and influencing the expansive musical score.
“These guys broke me down,” he says. “They sent me many polite emails over several months. Derik [Murray, co-director with Adrian Buitenhuis of I Am Heath Ledger], came to my then co-op work space, TechArtista, and he was in the lobby one day. We talked and I showed him Heath’s work with The Masses, [Ledger’s and Amato’s Los Angeles-based production company]. But I told him the answer was probably no.”
Amato talked to Michelle Williams, the mother of Ledger’s daughter, and with the understanding that he would have a good deal of creative control, agreed to collaborate with the filmmakers. He found himself flying to Vancouver, Canada and agreed to work on the movie with Murray and Buitenhuis. For Amato, it was a sort of reliving of his life with Ledger, traveling to Australia, reuniting with some old friends, and filming them in Los Angeles and New York.
Seeing St. Louis’ Built Environment Through a Cinematic Lens
“It was a whirlwind,” Amato laughs, “All of a sudden, there was this release date at the Tribeca Film Festival, and we were still filming, and so I’ll always have my reservations with the final product. But, overall, it’s a very positive portrait of a real lover of life, and his family truly loves it. Their appreciation of it means a lot to me and made it worth doing.”
For me, watching I Am Heath Ledger was a fascinating window into an actor who I’d only known in passing. I have actually only seen the bookends of Ledger’s career, 10 Things I Hate About You and The Dark Knight, in which Ledger plays the Joker. Bringing life to a teen romance and a comic book character is no small feat. But in between those two movies, Ledger was leading a life full of creativity and exploration. I particularly identified with his sense of wonder as he filmed out the balcony of his apartment in Prague. I Am Heath Ledger made me want to go back and see all those movies of his career between the bookends. Amato recommends watching Ledger’s performance in Candy.
Ultimately, I Am Heath Ledger was well-received at the Tribeca Film Festival. “Heath was very private,” Amato explains, pausing for second to gather his thoughts. “At first, I couldn’t get around the feeling I shouldn’t be involved. But we had a lot of really great material. Some of the interviews were so fantastic. I’ve gotten really encouraging words from people all over of the world, telling me that they were inspired by it, and that makes me happy.
“Being philosophical about it all, I realized I was on a mission that was very positive and made with a good deal of respect from all involved.”
Ledger and Amato had always intended The Makings of You to be the first movie produced by The Masses. The following clip, filmed for I Am Heath Ledger features the film’s composer, Carlos Niño, and Ledger’s mother and younger sister, who traveled from Perth, Australia to St. Louis to be a part of The Makings of You.
“Yeah, I feel like that there’s not enough Heath in the world, so going back and looking at stuff was wonderful,” he says. “It was wonderful to see his face and hear his voice. I’ve never had a chance to look back; I was working on the day he died and kept working. Looking back made me feel old for the first time in my life.”
With Amato’s energy, the last word I would ever use to describe him is “old.” When speaking with him, his enthusiasm and sense of purpose immediately becomes apparent. Perhaps what always impresses me when I talk with Amato is his bounty of new ideas for future projects, which will easily keep him busy for several more decades. He has also decided to make Cherokee Street his home.
Amato says he didn’t know how great Cherokee Street was when he moved here in the summer of 2013, not even knowing anyone. While Amato used to come down to the east side of Jefferson to buy Christmas gifts on Antique Row, like many people he never experienced the west side of Jefferson. He met Sam Coffey, one of the partners in the Fortune Teller Bar, first. Amato had mentioned to a mutual friend that he wanted to film in Benton Park, and Coffey showed him around the neighborhood.
“I became enchanted. I realized there was this whole community around that was super fun,” Amato reminisces, “I remember waking up one Sunday and there was a dumpster filled with water and people,” the annual pool party hosted by The Fortune Teller. Amato spent seven months editing The Makings of You and would walk across Benton Park to Shock City for the movie’s sound design. He ended up being here two years, and “I got to know everybody, and realized what a vibrant community this is. After Ferguson, I watched a lot of the community become active, and even a couple of my neighbors, Dan Guenther and Cara Spencer, became aldermen. I remember the celebration in the rain the night Bruce Franks won the revote [against Penny Hubbard].”
The quiet, beautiful, radical vision of filmmaker Matt Amato
More recently, the continued tribulations of residents living in the shadow of nuclear waste at the Westlake Landfill has captured Amato’s attention. He explains, “Films don’t exist without people. John Cassavetes says ‘I make movies for people.’ And that’s my opinion. How can movies change things for the better? How can I grow in my own awareness? St. Louis is not only just a fun place to be, it is a place that is actually my inspiration. When you make your moves in life, whether it’s for love or for a job, it’s moving towards your inspirations.
Consequently, Amato is directing a movie about the National Building Arts Foundation’s founder Larry Giles.
“Meeting people like Larry is one of the reasons I’m hooked on this city,” remarks Amato, “Larry has more star quality than Paul Newman and Steve McQueen combined. He’s just that cool. Aside from his innate star-quality, seeing this city through his eyes will be a transformative experience for any viewer.”
Other future projects could entail his mother’s childhood in South St. Louis and “real-life heroes” such as the Just Moms group challenging the government on the Westlake Landfill. Also, Ledger and Amato had been planning on making Walter Tevis’s The Queen’s Gambit into a movie with cinematographer Ed Lachman. Ledger completed the screenplay with writer Allan Scott. Amato hopes to direct the movie in St. Louis.
As Amato said in a Huffpost interview, “Hopefully we’ll make Queen’s Gambit. We’ll do it in St. Louis, with Ed Lachman. St. Louis has now become the chess capital of the world … My little work co-op is right around the corner and there’s the world’s largest chess piece there, and it’s the Queen. It’s like right there, and I look at it and I’m like, ‘I’m no dummy! I can see the sign!’ It’s about a young woman, and we really wanted to flip the paradigm of this male-driven, macho bullshit culture that we’re drowning in. I feel like our culture really needs nurturing in this way and we need to be reflective and look at people and deal with people like this.”
For working artists here, Amato believes St. Louis needs people to represent this city to the rest of the world. Right now, there is no such advocate for our city. One of the purposes of The Masses in Los Angeles was to become a resource for artists. He’d like to see that same sense of community develop in the Midwest.
Amato still makes music videos, and his former clients include Barbara Streisand, Beach House, Bon Iver and Wild Nothing; his work can be seen at mattamato.com. I enjoyed the Barbra Streisand video in particular. While Streisand had recorded the unreleased song in 1970, Amato did not direct the video until 2012. Consequently, he had to jog the memories of the original producer, Richard Perry, about important details of the original recording. Amato reproduced small details such as the original type of microphone preferred by Streisand and the setting of the recording. Amato describes it as “an exercise in verisimilitude.”
“You have to be an ardent optimist,” concludes Amato. “We want The Makings of You to make it out to the world. I believe there is an audience out there for it. It’s a love story, pure and simple. This movie, because of its visual quality, that it’s made in St. Louis with a St. Louis crew, placing a real story in real settings, represents our filmmaking ambitions. Maybe someday it will stand as a cornerstone to a new wave of moviemaking broadcasting from the Midwest. It’s an exciting idea, being that independent.”
But For the meantime, when not directing music videos, Amato continues to absorb inspiration in his new home on Cherokee Street.
“I’m addicted to the sunrise now. The cityscape and the sunrise are a knockout pretty much every day. I used to be a surfer, so I’m used to waking up before dawn. At sunset, I can see the cross on St. Agatha’s glowing. I’ve never been able to cut the umbilical cord to The Makings of You. It has a special place in my heart. I always trusted that the time would have be right for audiences to appreciate our movie. So many encouraging changes in our culture have happened recently. People are standing up for themselves like never before. And, women are taking center stage, which thrills me. They’ve always been at the center of my world. I can’t wait for people to experience the grounded and powerful performances of Sheryl Lee and Grace Zabriskie in our movie.”
Chris Naffziger writes about architecture at St. Louis Patina. Contact him via email at [email protected].
