Of all the films that most directors would try to re-imagine or remake, Warhol’s eight-hour shot of the Empire State Building would probably be at the bottom of the list. So I have two questions in one: How many times have you sat and watched Empire all the way through and what prompted you to take on this project?

[Laughs] Well you know, I think I only sat through it once and of course I fell asleep a couple of times. Which was actually kind of great because, you know, I woke up and I didn’t miss anything. [Laughs] You know, I moved into this apartment and I moved the camera in. That was the first thing I did. And then I just started shooting and then it just started to dawn on me that it had been done before in a certain way, in 16 mm black and white silence. And then the ideas just started flowing and I decided that it would be a year to the day that I would shoot for but you know I have ADD so I can’t just keep that one shot. [Laughs] And then the joke of remaking Empire, as you put it, was definitely right there from the beginning. That’s the last film in the world anyone would remake, which is of course the whole reason for doing it. [Poe set up his camera on a window of his Christopher Street apartment and took time-lapse shots from Nov. 1, 2005-October 31, 2006-Ed.]

There seems to be a lot of disenchantment with the city these days because of the gentrification, skyrocketing cost of living and the real estate explosion. Does it seem strange at all to release a No Wave, no budget film about Manhattan in 2008?

Yeah, I mean it’s kind of like, “Why not?” For all the negative things or whatever that are going on in Manhattan, it’s still where you live and you’ve got to shoot where you live. That never daunted me at all. I always wanted a room with a view and this was a room with a view. It became apparent to me very early on in the process that this is going to be what I needed to do.

It seems like the idea of a New York movie is kind of a dead one because you can shoot everything in Toronto now and no one would really know the difference. But the interesting thing that your film does is present a very poetic view of the city. There are so many rich colors and chaotic shots that it makes Manhattan look singular again. How do you hope that people interpret the movie?

I just hope that they experience it more than anything else. So far wherever I’ve shown it in the world it’s really kind of taken on a life of its own because everyone has a take on New York. No matter what they think of the United States they all have a kind of wonderful sensibility about New York. I think that’s been the best part of the whole thing, just the way people are experiencing it as a New York thing.

Thurston and his band laid down a remarkable improvised noise freak-out for your film last night. What was it like watching the soundtrack take shape like that and how do you think about sound and music when you’re making your films?

Well, I always think of them as two separate entities and of course they are the two most important entities. When I watched it last night I was a little bit nervous because I know at this point how the film works on an audience in terms of the soundtrack as it is on the film. But I just trusted Thurston that he was going to come up with something cool. It definitely wasn’t the mesmerizing thing that the original soundtrack was but I knew it was going to be a whole different experience. And it was also a way to just introduce the film, by even experimenting with the projection as well as the film itself.

That’s the funny thing about the film: Some person had a party and used it as this huge projected image on the wall and he didn’t even play the soundtrack, he played his iPod Shuffle and it was amazing how it would synch up. And at the opening night gig of the film festival in Greece they had some band that was very Sonic Youth-y that wanted to play along with the film and I just said, “Yeah sure, do it.” I thought it was going to be stupid and then it totally worked. That’s why I asked Thurston to do it.

I would be remiss not to ask you for a bit of a history lesson. What can you tell us about that very specific No Wave Lower East Side art community that you belonged to in the ‘70s and ‘80s? Did you guys feel like you were a part of an art movement at that time?

I don’t think we were that conscious of it. I wasn’t conscious of it because I wasn’t a trained filmmaker. I didn’t necessarily know how to make movies but I was so enamored with the French New Wave at the time that I decided I wanted to start a New York New Wave. The idea was that if you could make no budget films, then somebody else would do it and somebody else would do it and somebody else would do it and then you would have kind of like the similar thing. I mean it was kind of a naïve, romantic notion on my part but it was because of me saying that I was just going to make movies even though I didn’t know how to make them. You know, it was in synch with the bands at the time because the Ramones didn’t know how to play either.

I mean [the No Wave filmmakers and punk bands] all hung out together. We all knew each other, we all worked on each other’s projects, we all fucked each other, we all got high together. In the very basic sense of the word it was definitely a cultural group. But you know we were so in the Groucho Marx mold that we didn’t want to be a part of any group that would have us as a part. As soon as there was a label attached to it we didn’t want to be a part of that label. But now it’s historical so there’s no threat there.

Empire II plays at the Tribeca Film Festival on May 2 and 3. For more information and to buy tickets visit the festival’s Web site.