What follows is a long overdue (and somewhat longwinded) update on the status of The Plants Are Listening, the movie I’ve been working on, on and off, for a good while now. If you read this “blog” and/or know me personally (whether in “real life” or mostly via the internet), you’re probably well aware that this movie has undergone many changes. Now that things have taken shape and more and more footage is “in the can” with each passing week, as the project nears completion, it’s much easier to discuss what the movie is “about” and what sort of viewing experience audiences can expect.
Observing the first eleven or twelve minutes of the The Plants Are Listening, as they stand edited together, the film I’m reminded of the most, perhaps, is Jean-Luc Godard’s underrated (and rather neglected) late-period effort JLG/JLG: Self-Portrait in December. In both movies there’s a moody undercurrent of reflection as the director mostly sticks around the house and ruminates on various topics with a literary bent. I’m pretty sure the similarities here weren’t intentional — influenced as I am by many artists, rarely will I consciously model a movie I’m making after someone else’s — but they’re probably there if one feels inclined to compare the two titles. I remember, after a screening of Godard’s film, some people, clearly not fans of his work, complaining that it was “basically just some old French guy smoking cigars and talking to himself for an hour and a half.” But I found JLG/JLG: Self-Portrait in December to be a pleasant sit and eminently engaging, especially in relation to some of the clunkers the 84-year-old director has unleashed over the years.
Where the two movies differ most is that I’m not at all a world-renowned cultural figure with a revered, decades-old legacy–I’m essentially an “unknown” filmmaker at this point, a fringe dweller on the cinematic landscape. The Plants Are Listening, despite several silent passages, also features more dialogue, the majority of it carefully scripted, the result of months and months of writing and refining. It’s probably also more accessible and closer to being a “normal” movie, albeit one with a thin plot and more of an attention to detail (particularly that of non-humans/inanimate objects) than most of the cinema being shown at the box office.
All told, it’s looking like The Plants Are Listening will be a fairly easy sit. I’m guessing it’ll clock in at around forty-five or fifty minutes so this will probably qualify as my debut feature.
Dave J. Andrae's "Blog" 
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