Driven by music and choreography, Soon is a play first performed in Europe in 1998 and then again in the US in 2001. The music is available for the first time, recently re-worked into a compelling weave of brief spoken-word segments and songs constructed from the dialogues. Complete selection available to download from possiblefilms.com now. Individual tracks available everywhere else.

Track List:

01. Epiphany
02. Heaven On Earth
03. Listen to this song at our website.
04. Because
05. Angels Of The Lord
06. And Still Nothing Happens
07. Style
08. Go
09. Windows
10. Something Big
11. The Ways Of God
12. Doubt
13. God’s Army
14. School
15. I Have Been Sent Back
16. See How I Burn In My Love
17. Soon Reprise

From the new release SOON, Music from the Play by Hal Hartley. This song is made with recordings from the second, US, staging of Soon in California. “Generally, we thought of the European production as large, quiet, and slow; the US version was small, loud, and fast.” (Hal, from the press kit interview)

SOON, a play – published and available in paperback June 17, 2010. Perfect-bound paperback, 85 pages.

SOON, music from the play – digital release through Bug Digital July 6, 2010. Pre-release (entire “album”) from Possible Films June 29.

Originally staged in Europe and the United States in 1998 and 2001 respectively, SOON is a fever-dream verbal avalanche about the joys, sorrows, and disasters of “creative religiosity”. Inspired by the Branch Davidian Conflict of 1993, the play explores the turbulent spiritual needs and the tortured reasoning of sectarian “end-time” Christians in America. Hilarious, moving,  and sociologically astute, SOON “touched a naked nerve in contemporary American sensibility.” (Western European Stages)

INTERVIEW:

How did you become interested in this subject?

I think the most important things were just the events at Waco. I was making Amateur at the time [Amateur, feature film, released 1994]. I was very busy, rushing around. And meanwhile these events were transpiring down in Texas. Every once in awhile I’d stop and read a newspaper or see a report on TV and (…) Because in the previous ten years I had – on my own – done a lot of reading about Christianity. I wanted to understand it historically, I think. I never really understood the difference between Protestants and Catholics, for instance. So, I did all this reading. And I was one of those people in the first days of the conflict amazed to see journalists not knowing what Koresh and his people were referring to when they mentioned the “seven seals”. I mean, yes, I understand the regular guy on the street might not get this. But, also, professional armed agents of the government had no idea – that first day or so – what was meant by the seven seals, even though they had apparently been studying these Christian sectarians for months. So, I set out eventually to write about American gun laws and freedom of religion. But reading more and more about these people – the Branch Davidians in particular, but Adventism generally – I came to appreciate how these basically radical sectarian religious ideals are pretty tangled up with some of our most commonly held notions of freedom in America.

Why now, after all these years, are you finally publishing the play?

Honestly, I wanted finally to just get the thing off my desk. Really! For almost ten years I’ve told myself I should write up the definitive version – one that made clear what happens in the play. Because the play didn’t come about in the conventional way; that is, with me writing it and then going into rehearsals. I wrote a lot, and a lot of that was in fact texts from different sources (the bible, the historical record, and so on) – and we had a very long rehearsal period where we moved text around, changed lines from one character to another (…) In fact, the characters were only very broadly defined in what I wrote. It was through work with the actors – in both productions – that personalities were gradually discovered or invented. In the end, it is like the two productions were the latest drafts of the play. I could only write the play down once we had done these performances.

As you clearly state in the introduction, you are an atheist.           

Yes. I was raised Roman Catholic, taught by nuns and all that. Struggled to understand the world that way. But by ten or eleven I didn’t practice. Still, through my adolescence, my youth, and well into my thirties, I worked hard to articulate for myself what my spiritual life consisted of. I still do, of course, but at least now it is easier to say I am an atheist. I’m not religious. So, I believe this is progress. I’m skeptical by nature. I don’t apologize for that. I’m not dead certain about anything. But I’m clear about my attitude to that uncertainty. It took me a good deal of my life to acquire that.

But you are not perfectly critical of these religious people you portray.

No, I think I am perfectly critical of them. I’m not perfectly judgmental. I make an attempt to understand their reasoning without feeling the need to approve of that reasoning. Frankly, when I spend time with evangelicals I think to myself, these people are crazy. But, on the other hand, I’ve met professional politicians and professional journalists and also feel that the aims and ambitions of these people are often pretty strange too. So, you know, I tend generally to cut people some slack.

Do you identify more with these outsiders than with politicians and media professionals?

No, certainly not. But… I don’t think it’s my nature, necessarily – to try to understand everybody no matter how distant they are from me. Rather, I think it is more a result of having found my calling as a maker of fiction. I found that quite early in life. And I am drawn to imagining myself into the mindset of characters – especially characters I don’t understand. SOON offered me an opportunity to do that in some depth. In any event, it was by imagining myself into the minds and hearts of these sectarians that I began to acquire a greater critical awareness of the media in particular. And that affected the films I made in the following years… In some of my films, for instance, I have made a similar effort to enter into the mindset of politicians and media professionals – No Such Thing, Henry Fool, Girl From Monday…

How was the US staging different from the 1998 production in Salzburg and Antwerp?

Generally, we thought of the European production as large, quiet, and slow; the US version was small, loud, and fast. You can hear that difference in the music I made for the second production.

What influenced you in regard to the music?

At first: Appalachian music. These fiddle and accordion songs one comes across in these things… Shaker chants. But then it was just the needs of the story. The language has a rhythm from scene to scene that is hard to avoid. We made a lot of music after spending time watching the actors work on the scenes.

And the upcoming release of the music is from both productions?

Yes. It’s a mix of the strongest music from both productions. But it’s also revisited. I’ve taken some pieces of music and made songs out of them by cutting in scraps of the shows dialogue. And sometimes I just leave the spoken words alone for twenty or thirty seconds.

Returning to the book: This is your first play. Will there be others?

I wonder sometimes. Writing is what comes easiest to me. I can do it alone. I don’t need dozens of people and lots of money. But I don’t really enjoy plays. We call Soon a play for convenience. But in reality it was some kind of intensively text based dance piece. However, when I see theater I enjoy I remember what encouraged me to do Soon. That would be theater like The Wooster Group, Richard Foreman, Big Dance Theater, Robert Wilson, Pina Bausch, etc… By and large, not plays. So, I imagine I might want to write things that interesting theater makers can use. I guess that’s possible.

You are now in some ways distributing your own works – Possible Films is a publisher. What are the challenges in this?

Trying to reach a wider audience with limited means. That seems to be the challenge. It’s building, though. Each week more people visit the website and purchase music or films. Now it is also books. I’m lucky in that I have a lot of work to present. In some ways everything is different because you can – with constant effort – be in direct contact with your audience all over the world. On the other hand, you are competing for their attention with trillions of other entertainments equally easy to access. So, it’s just as hard as ever to get their attention.

Originally staged in Europe and the United States in 1998 and 2001 respectively, SOON is a fever-dream verbal avalanche about the joys, sorrows, and disasters of “creative religiosity.” Inspired by the Branch Davidian Conflict of 1993, the play explores the turbulent spiritual needs and the tortured reasoning of sectarian “end-time” Christians in America. Hilarious, moving, and sociologically astute, SOON “touched a naked nerve in contemporary American sensibility” (Western European Stages).

Perfect-bound paperback
85 pages
With an introduction by the author.

“I came to the subject as a writer curious about my country’s freedom of religion and its gun laws. But my study of the events at Waco led to a consideration of “revealed religion” in America generally. And, although the events at Waco were the catalyst, that catastrophe is not the play’s only focus. I have pared away the arcana specific to any one sect or another to focus on what all Christian “end time” denominations, share; namely, a belief that the world is miraculous and God is speaking to us in all sorts of ways.

I came to see that belief systems evolve. And – even more exciting – they evolve communally. Believers argue. This, I found, was really my subject; the sound of that argument, the way it moves, where it breaks, how it fixes itself.”

From the introduction.

Possible Films 2 comprises five new short films. An earlier collection, “Possible Films: Short Works by Hal Hartley 1994 – 2004” was released in 2004. This was a compilation of films Hartley had been commissioned to create at different times, in different places, and for different producers.

This new selection, Possible Films 2 (or “PF2”) is different in this regard and might usefully be called a “suite.” There are five separate films, but they were made practically at the same time over a few years, with a consistency of style and formal strategy that resembles something like a new album. The five films were made during when Hartley was living and working in Europe, and though clearly addressing different issues and initiated by separate concerns, they are linked by consistent preoccupations and formal creative strategies.

“Devotees of Hartley’s work are strongly encouraged to pick up this collection, along with anyone with an interest in modern experimental narrative.” —Pop Damage

“Exploring small ideas that couldn’t be fleshed out in feature form, Hartley creates intimate works that are honest and feel like they’re done by an artist doing it for the love of the craft, not looking for a quick buck. But would we think anything less from Hartley?” —Filmmaker Magazine

THE FILMS

A/MUSE (11:00)
An ambitious and idealistic young actress comes to Berlin to convince an American ex-pat filmmaker that she must be his next muse – the leading lady of his first great German film. Featuring: Christina Flick

IMPLIED HARMONIES (28:00)
Hartley’s conscientious assistant in Berlin receives weekly letters from her boss and sends him the books he needs as he struggles in Amsterdam to create the staging for Dutch composer Louis Andriessen’s opera, “la Commedia”. Featuring: Louis Andriessen, Christina Zavalloni, Claron McFadden, Jeroen Willems, Reinbert de Leeuw, Asko/Shoenberg Ensemble, Jordana Maurer

THE APOLOGIES (13:00)
A commercially realistic but artistically conflicted playwright lends his Berlin apartment to a young actress friend so she can rehearse her drama school audition while he goes off to save his doomed production in New York. Featuring: Nikolai Kinski, Bettina Zimmermann, Ireen Kirsch.

ADVENTURE (20:00)
Hartley and his wife, Miho Nikaido, travel to Japan to see her parents and reflect on 12 years of marriage, her career ambitions, and the adventures of growing older. Featuring: Miho Nikaido, Hal Hartley, the Nikaido Family, various friends…

ACCOMPLICE (3:08)
An artist-criminal far from home asks his assistant to pirate a rare videotape before the German Post Office Authorities come to confiscate it. Featuring: Jordana Maurer, DJ Mendel (voice), Professor David Poeppel (voice), Jean-Luc Godard, David Bordwell (voice).

Christina Flick in "A/Muse", one of five new short films by Hal Hartley included in the collection Possible Films 2

IFC Center in New York City (323 Ave of the Americas @ West 3rd) will present a two evening event with Hal, screening his 1991 film, Surviving Desire, on the 21st and his newest collection of short films, Possible Films 2, on the 22nd. Both programs start at 8:30pm. Hal will be introducing each program.

Q: What do you do when you’re not making films?

A: Make smaller films.

Q: About what?

A: What ever is on my mind. Or what ever is happening around me. There’s always something to make a little story about.

From No Such Thing, but not used on the “album.” A collaboration with Andy Russ from sometime in 1999.

A comedy about obsessive love from the director Time Magazine called “the smartest new outlaw in the movies.” Surviving Desire is a bold and playful little tale about a handsome young college professor smitten with a beautiful young female student. It is a swift dissection of male infatuation that is as fierce as it is compassionate.

Newly digitally re-mastered with color correction supervised by the director, this early Hartley favorite stars Martin Donovan, Mary Ward, Matt Malloy, and Rebecca Nelson. North American customers will also receive Theory of Achievement & Ambition, two shorts directed by Hal in 1991.