Adam Leon director of "Gimme the Loot"

There is a feeling of nostalgia for teenage years in the film, but the story is very actual and universal; how did you work on that?

Adam: I wanted it to be about this very specific place and time in New York, but also a little throwback to the ’80s and ’90s, which is when I grew up. We wanted to capture the now of the characters and reflect on what growing up in the city was like and that sort of energy.

The dialogues are amazing, and they reminded me a bit of Richard Linklater. Was he one of the influences?

Adam: I respect Linklater very much and yes, he is one of the people I look up to a lot. Woody Allen and Robert Altman as well. These three people have something in common: it’s ok for your characters to hang out and be natural, but with a sense that there is a story being told.

Tyler: It felt very improvised but it wasn’t. By the time we got on set, we’ve already done the scenes hundreds of times.

Tell me more on how you met and worked together…

Tyler: I met Adam 5 years ago and I was in his short Killer, his casting agent picked me up from the street. It fell from the sky and that was great. Adam believed in me and wanted to write a feature for me, so we were preparing for the past 2 years. He wanted me to feel comfortable so I had a large role in decision making. We auditioned about 500 girls for Sophia and at one point we thought we wouldn’t make the film at all because we didn’t have the girl, but it happened miraculously: Tashi Washington is an actress and a singer from Universal. She will release a single very soon.

Adam: I really love how film is a collaborative art. I create the characters in my head, then find someone to embody what I wrote but also bring so much more to it. We rehearsed a lot, because we knew that on set we have to be prepared for everything to go wrong. It was a low budget film, but I feel like this film should be made with this budget, it would be actually worse if we had 5 or 6 million dollars.

Tyler, were you familiar with grafitti culture before the film, or did you prepare for it?

Tyler: I also draw, and when I worked on Killer I met a lot of grafitti artists, hang out and went bombin’ a little bit with them. Tashi didn’t have any experience at all, so she had a bigegr challenge and pulled it off better than me.

Adam, at one point I got the feeling that you were going to speak about racism and class differences, but you didn’t go that way. Did you think about these issues when developing the story?

Adam: Of course, the main characters are African-American, and this is a major part of who they are, but this is is not a „black film”. We just wanted to stay true to who these characters are as people first, rather than as social ideas.

How did you choose the music?

Adam: People would expect hip hop, but most of the music is ’50s and ’60s gospel. I love that music and it tells the audience „it’s a story and an adventure, not some sort of fake documentary” and „this is gonna be fun”. We were trying to make a film that was sweet and cool and fun.

Where does the title come from?

Adam: „Gimme the loot” is a sort of a heist term from hip hop, and also the title of a song from Notorious B.I.G. I really like it, it’s active and it captures some of the spirit of the film. It’s not a traditional heist movie but we played with that a little bit. A very attractive girl once told me that both girls and guys like heist films, so I tried to embrace that idea a little bit, to get the dudes and the pretty chicks as well!

by Andreaa Dobre