So what was it that the RLM guys said About Garrett Gilchrist in the How Not to Make a Movie? And why did he hate Jay in particular so much?
Ok so I'm checking my blog for the first time in God knows how long and I see this question has been sitting here for almost a year. Sorry for the late response but I'm so glad you asked because it gave me an excuse to dust this relic off my movie shelf:
So for those that don't know, "How Not to Make a Movie" is a retrospective documentary made in 2013 chronicling the making and remastering process of the movie "Gorilla Interrupted" that Jay, Mike, Rich, and a guy named Garret Gilchrist made in 2003. (If anyone wants more general info or other questions about this doc/film, let me know. But for the sake of this post, I'll just address anon's specific question regarding Garret and the guys. )
Relevant backstory: the making of Gorilla Interrupted was tough for a lot of reasons and put stress on the whole group. Please keep in mind they were all film bros in their early twenties who met through film message boards. (Except Mike and Rich who met in high school) They were all staying in Rich's house and all got sick, the set/props were make shift and constantly falling apart and causing injury, they were very ambitious and tried to make this whole movie in a week on basically an outline of a script, and some of them had different ideas on what they wanted for the story/characters so tensions were high throughout the process and everybody was miserable for much of it.
As far as Garrett vs. the others goes, basically Mike took control of the film because someone had to be in charge, but Garrett also tried to be in control. He rewrote his own version of the script, added dialogue, props, costumes, etc. without running it by Mike (the director) and Garret also tried to direct at the same time. This was mainly a Garrett vs. Mike conflict, as Rich and Jay just didn't want to get in the way. However, everyone was frustrated specifically with Garrett for various reasons because he really just did nothing but make the whole process more difficult the entire time he was there. All of this is said in the doc by everyone but Garrett, who isn't in it lol.
Now for why Garrett didn't like Jay specifically, this isn't really touched on in the doc, that's from a lot of speculation and old internet message boards. I'll summarize what I remember and some of my thoughts. It's obvious from the doc that Garret is the loud, obnoxious, overly confident type, and Jay was much more soft spoken and artsy. So personalities for sure clashed a bit. Garrett did go on a huge rant on I think YouTube years ago about his falling out with the rlm guys, and lucky for us somebody made a handy flow chart of what happened. Here is that:
In summary, this is obviously a bias against Jay by Garrett I believe because of a clashing of personalities. But mostly it seems he didn't respect Jay for how he acted around girls at the time (they were early 20s I remind you) and thought Jay was a poser but Jay was still discovering g himself because, again, early 20s.
Jay, Mike, and Rich are all still friends deep into middle age and making successful content that we all love and Garrett is...idk. Not in the group I'll tell you that. So you decide on who the best judge of character is here.
