Film Reviews, Interviews and Articles
Ok, you’ve had some time to geek out over the nostalgia-gasm that is the new trailer for Goosebumps, right? You’ve splooshed and boi-oi-oinged to the barrage of imagery straight from the pages of R.L. Stine‘s landmark, commercially record-breaking, critically-null epic chronicle of that which lurks beneath the sink and the seemingly mundane life of every kid born between 1983 and 1988 (my apologies to the precocious and the held-back). Read More
A barber’s straight razor cuts through the membrane of a young woman’s eyeball to reveal the gushing fluid inside. Ants crawl out of a mysterious hole in a man’s hand. Neither of these disturbing images have context, nor do they need it in the pure insanity of Un Chien Andalou, a 15-minute short directed by Luis Bunuel in 1929 with participation from fellow Spaniard and avant-garde artist Salvador Dali. It was a monumental stepping stone for cinema; one that represents one of the earliest depictions of surrealism in film. Read More
2015 is shaping up to be the year of the great rom-com as Judd Apatow‘s Trainwreck is the third great romantic comedy or romantic comedy drama (or romantic dramedy) that I’ve seen this year – the other two being Adult Beginners and Sleeping With Other People. A portion of our SXSW review states:
Take it from the effervescently crass mouth of Amy Schumer, “The title was always Trainwreck. Trainwreck or Cum Dumpster.” Oh Amy, you are such just so…you. From talk radio appearances to gross-out Twitter posts, the Schum has crafted her image on being unapologetically, oh-so-adorably crude and in the context of Trainwreck, it’s miraculous to take in. At last night’s premiere, when an audience member inundated her with compliments, she barked, “Stop trying to fuck me.” She has swiftly become the epitome of 21st century feminism-as-middle finger; the crème de la crème of vagina jokes and reverse slut shaming that will melt the lipstick off housewives and zap the calories off your finger sandwiches with her gloriously nasty one-liners and hysterically sexual non-sequiturs. (Full review here)
Amy and Judd appeared after the SXSW premiere of what is being referred to as a “work in progress” cut of the film – though in my review, I question how much – or rather how little – change we’ll see before the final cut – to talk about where the film came from, what it was like working together, what makes Amy Schumer Amy Schumer and moving the action from LA to NYC.
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Judd Apatow: I was just a fan. I heard Amy on the Howard Stern show one day. I had been talking a lot about these things, and I was just sitting in my car in the parking lot, because I didn’t want to miss it. I remember thinking, “I think she has stories to tell.” And I called her and said, “Do you want to meet?”, and she wrote back.
Amy Schumer: I said, “I’m super busy.” Yeah, I was like, “Oh my god!” We met in person, to find out what stories we’d like to tell.
AS: The most fun part? This is super personal, but this is a personal story, for me. Just getting to do it with my sister there, every step of the way. Being able to play with my sister, Kim, and having her there. She helped me to write it. So getting to go back to my trailer every day, and being like, “Do I have a trailer?” This is my first movie, so getting to be with her, from day one to the last day, when we went back, and started drinking tequila, just the two of us. It was so special to do with her.
AS: I was born and raised in New York City and then we went bankrupt and moved to Long Island. I write everything that I’ve ever written in New York. I can’t imagine having a big kitchen. Judd was nice enough to leave his family for a couple of months and shoot in the ninety-degree New York China Town weather. I write everything in New York.
AS: I’m fine! The truth is, I submitted my first script to Judd and he was really nice. He was like, “Why don’t you write about what’s really up?” And I took a look at myself. So this is very much me taking a look at what’s going on with me. I wanted to say, “This poor girl!” But yeah, it’s me.
AS: I think I was just very innocent for a long time. I was just visiting my brother last week, in Chicago, and he reminded me that I didn’t lose my two front teeth until fifth grade. But I had just had my first period so I was just this jack o’ lantern with tits, walking around! I just looked like Pinocchio, when he was transitioning into a donkey. Or like Pluto. I just didn’t think anything was possible but polygamy for me until I was 30. So I don’t know. I get super sentimental when I see girls on the Ellen show, just like young girls that feel like everything’s okay, and for some reason, I held on to that for longer than most. I just encourage that kind of being non-apologetic and that you’re allowed to be a human being. Yeah, and I was lucky to meet people like Howard Stern and Judd.
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Joe Swanberg‘s got a Joe Swanberg way of making movies. Working with a cast of hot shot, big name, creme da la creme names though means Swanberg being, well, a little less Swanberg-y. Instead of just “going for it” with Digging for Fire, Swanberg penned his most complete script yet. About ten pages worth of it. But such is the Swanberg way. Have I said Swanberg enough yet?
Although we had some minor issues with Digging for Fire at its Sundance premiere, the mumblecore maestro nonetheless managed to sink his independent teeth into some interesting territory with a stunning barrage of talent, including Jake Johnson, Rosemarie DeWitt, Brie Larson, Anna Kendrick, Ron Livingston, Sam Elliot, Orlando Bloom, Sam Rockwell, Melanie Lynskey, Chris Messina and a glorified cameo from Jenny Slate. Swanberg, Johnson and DeWitt took to the stage to explore the meaning of Digging for Fire and to illuminate the process of Swanberg filmmaking, from making kids cry to spontaneously hanging dong. Read More
Every once in a while an independent film comes along and rocks the film world to its core. People, Places, Things is not that film. It is however a richly charming film full of love and life lessons. James Strouse‘s latest was an affable dramedy about the woes and joys of marriage, divorce and parenthood in the chaos of NYC. Our full review beamed over Jemaine Clement finally getting the role he deserved and rightfully pointed out Strouse’s quiet ode to race in relationships. Joinging the rest of the cast, Strouse detailed the process of making the film, where his ideas came from, working out the score with Mark Otson, graphic artistry and using race without “using race.
James Strouse: You know what, there’s a process – I’ve been writing for a while. I wrote this very quickly. I wrote a lot of things that were hinting this way, for a long time, and then I wrote the first draft really quickly, and then I just put it away, and didn’t think about it for a long time. That was really cool, because when I brought it out again, maybe half a year later, I knew exactly what to do – there were some things that immediately seemed wrong, and I changed. It evolved, organically, over time. Putting it away and forgetting about it was really important.
Jemaine Clement: It’s hard to balance the emotional part of myself with the hiphopotamus part of myself. The main challenge in filming. I really get it quite down, before a part. Are you satisfied?
JS: I love this thing and it was really just the script. I started thinking about, “Well, if I could get anyone, who would I get?” These people were the first on my list, and basically, they wanted to do it. I basically had a feeling that they would all play off of each other really nicely, and I think they all do. Everyone’s so distinct, and funny, and subtle. The casting, I don’t know if there’s anything more in-depth you’d like to know.
JS: It started with Jermaine.
JS: Well, these are all fantastic actors, so they make everything seem natural. Like I said, the people standing here are the people I wanted in. I have so much respect, and enjoy their work. I was confident they were going to be great. I think they were. Very early on, Jermaine very politely asked, “Is it okay to go off-script?” And I said, “Of course.” Everyone went off a little, and we used a lot of it. Everyone sort of respected what each and every scene was about. It wasn’t like we ever had unusable stuff. It was within the characters they were creating. It wasn’t like, “What would be funny to do here?” It was, “What’s the funniest thing I can do, that’s right for the character.” It’s all them, they did it. They made it seem natural.
JS: Yes. Colleen Sharpe help me put it together. Greg Williams also did the drawings for Rhode’s character. To be honest, from the start it looked great. He was a student in a screenwriter class of mine. He was working on a script that he wanted to adapt into a graphic novel. I said, “Can I see your drawings? I want to see what you’re thinking for the dialogue.” He showed me the drawing, which were like the drawings in this movie, and I thought, “This is amazing. These drawings are amazing.” I said, “I have this script about graphic novels. If I ever make it, I’d like you to do the drawings.” And he just kind of rolled his eyes. But then it happened! And then Cat’s drawings – Lauren Weinstein, who’s an SBA teacher, she teaches in the comic art department.
JS: Mark Orton and I were doing a roundtable about the relationship between director and composer. Just like all these wonderful actors here, I loved his work. My experience, in the past, with making films, is you put in a lot of temp music, music that you can’t actually use, but it works for now, and then you get really wedded to that music, and then a composer comes in, and tries to approximate that, and does something completely different. What happens with this film is that I put a lot of Mark’s music in the temp score, so I knew how it was going to feel. I love his music! It’s fantastic! He’s scored a lot of lovely films. I think there’s something really about the sensibility that fits this movie. It’s funny, without trying too hard. It has emotion, without pushing it too much. It’s lovely, itself.
Regina Hall: It was the way that it was written, and it was really nice to get on-set, and have Jim be like, “Okay, you can improvise here, whenever you want.” We got to play, and explore, which was nice. The character came out of that.
Jessica Williams: Same for me. Jim was so great, so great and so talented! I love Kat so much! But I love her so much, so I think going into it, respecting everyone’s artistry, and her artistry, and kind of made the natural connection.
JW: I noticed when I read the script from Jim, it didn’t have race in there. I think he was just casting women. I asked him, “Do you think about race? Do you now?”
JS: I just wanted good actors!
It’s 2015 and there are no less than 20 apps that serve to guide desperate, lonely people towards other desperate, horny people. And yet, solitude and loneliness is an issue people face more and more. The growing divide between sexual satisfaction and emotional closeness is one that interests director Leslye Headland of Bachelorette and now Sleeping With Other People. Joined by Jason Sudeikis and Alison Brie, Headland revealed – in riotous fashion – what her creative process looked like (a lot of on-set crying), what it was like working with the actors, knowing where to draw the line and her many, many movie references.
Leslye Headland: I’m sure you guys have been sitting out there since 5 a.m. or something. It’s like a Grateful Dead concert. I think that just dated me. I can hear them say my name, I’m on cloud nine! Look at all these god damn motherfuckers! You perverts, what are you doing here at 5 a.m. in the morning. Holy shit! I’m going to introduce some people who are going to do this Q & A with me. We’re so excited to talk to you about the movie, and answer any questions you might have. We’re just so excited, and so proud of this film.
Q: How much of the acting was improvised, and how much was written?
LH: Do you guys want to talk about that?
Alison Brie: Most of it was written, a large percentage of it was written. The script was so tight, and so amazing, from the get go. But Leslie was so wonderful about letting us loosen it up, and discover little idiosyncrasies between Jake and Laney. Obviously, Jason Mantoukas and Andrea Savage did a fair amount of improv in their scenes; the end credit bit was fully improvised. And this guy comes up with really amazing, funny stuff all the time. It’s really fun, so much of it was scripted, but it’s also fun to see the things that made it in.
Jason Sudeikis: As far as improvisation goes, I think it’s kind of a misnomer, even with us not burning film anymore, it all being digital, which you can delete and re-format and save money on. It’s not just, “Roll the camera, and do something until you find something. Say whatever you want.” Because there’s the danger of inventing some new set that hasn’t happened. I mention, “I work at NASA.” That’s bad improv. Then Jess is like, “Great! Now I’ve got to add a space station to the set!” So a lot of it more comes in terms of fast re-writing, just sort of bantering through the rehearsals, which we did. And I think Leslie, coming from the theater, you don’t have that six weeks before you show it in a preview. And then this, especially in an independent film, we’ve only got five takes, and we’ve got to move the camera. We got to do shit, we’ve got stuff to do. We’ve got a space station to get to! So the idea of it being improvised is a misnomer. You’ve just got to think of the script, and Leslie’s words, and Leslie’s heart and soul, as being a jumping off point, almost like a suggestion in an improv show. You try to improvise within the character, within the tone. It’s all about being inspired by the original voice, and the voice you’re given, as a character, from the writer, and in this case, the director as well, coming through that. It’s less making things up on the fly, it’s more about catching the wave that’s already there.
Q: I don’t think anyone’s going to look at a green tea bottle again. Can you talk a little bit about that choice?
LH: I did let Jason pick the bottle. We brought like three of them, and I was like, “Which one do you want to use?”
JS: I was in the bathroom…
LH: And you bought him dinner?
AB: Glass bottles, dinner, and the best woman blood.
Q: Did everyone know one another, before the film, or was this the first thing that brought you together?
LH: I met Jason about three years ago, right before I started shooting ‘Bachelorette’. He’s heard me tell this story a million times now, I was so… we met up, and I thought it would be sort of like, “Hi…”, “Hello…”; and we sat there for like three hours; it was a long time. I just thought, “This guy is so fucking special. His point of view is so unique.” We just talked about everything, from theater, to film, to our personal lives, it’s like a real artistic connection there. I just thought, “I really want to write this guy something. I really want to write a love story, where he’s the lead. He’s the guy.” Because I think that’s one of the things that’s so hard about making a romantic comedy, right now, are the leads. They’re usually so, they don’t have any problems. It starts out, and the girl’s got everything, except the right penis to stick inside her! And Jason’s just a complicated, awesome person, and so I was inspired by meeting him, and the work he’s done. I’m probably the largest ‘Community’ fan there is, out there. When I met Alison, it was like… I kept it together, for like fifteen minutes at least, I acted cool. Then I was like, “I’ve seen every episode of ‘Community’ at least three times.” I’ll be at home, hanging out, and I’ll be like, “Let me just watch community again. Let’s just do that.” She was someone I always wanted to work with, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know her, socially, and she had read the script, and she was kind enough to come in, and meet me, and it was just love at first sight. And I got to see them read together, as well, which was really exciting, because I think that so much of a romantic comedy is the sound… it’s one of the first genres, where they introduced sound to film. Here you go, 20th century. When I heard them speaking to each other, I was like, “This is the sound of people falling in love with each other.” And I think you guys were talking about nothing. Shooting the shit, and I was like, “We’re going to make some money off of that.” The first time we were rehearsing, and they were rehearsing the drinking scene, and we didn’t have a glass bottle, and Jason was just sort of saying the lines, “glug, glug, glug”, and he started doing it. And I was like, “Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!” My dad’s going to kill me! This has to be in the movie. So many people have to see this. Anyone with retinas is going to see this. Anyway, a long-winded answer, but as you can tell, I’m brimming with love for these guys. This movie’s my heart, and they met me so hard. They didn’t flinch once, man. I came at them, hard, and they came right back at me. I’m so proud of their performances, and of the film itself.
Q: Discuss the challenge of keeping the tone right.
LH: Oh, the tone. That’s one of those ethereal words, isn’t it? Keeping the tone right… I don’t really know how to answer that question, because I feel like it’s something that’s usually very difficult. With this film, even when I watched the assembly – if you don’t know what an assembly is, it’s when you basically see the entire movie cut together. It’s usually about three hours long. And you basically think, “Why did I do this? Why did I decide to become a director? I’m going to fade away into obscurity, and everyone’s going to find out that I’m a hack.” Maybe I should just go kill myself, in a peaceful way. And no one will ever see this. And so, that’s usually the reaction. And I have to say, when I saw the assembly, the tone was really there, already there. It is a little bit magical chemistry, kind of thing that I’m really grateful for. It wasn’t something at the forefront of our minds. We put a lot of work, my department heads did a lot of work. My editor, my production designer, my costume designer, my DP, line producer, Jessica, everybody.
AB: I want to say something about this, because I want to give you more credit! A lot of the material, especially with the Sobvechik/Laney scene, could be very intense! And I think that Leslie was very great about taking the temperature of it, every time we were shooting it, and getting a read on, like, “Okay, we’ve done the REALLY intense version. And now let’s do some where no one’s going to slit their wrists, right away.” And things like that. And I was also going to say, because I think it’s funny, with Adam’s schedule, we had to shoot all the Sobvechik scenes, the first week of production. And it was super weird, because we kept being like, “Are we just making a sexual, psychological thriller? What is this movie? It’s crazy intense!” And then Jason, suddenly, would have a scene, with some casual walking time, and we’d be like, “It’s fun and bubbly! Oh, thank God!”
LH: Poor Jessica would be like, “Holy shit!” I also wanted to add to that, the Adam Brody scene, in which Adam was so incredible in. He did me such a solid, to come in for one day, and do that scene. I just remembered, that day…
AB: I want to immediately piggyback on it, before you even get to say anything about it! Also, what you were saying about it, in terms of, not necessarily improving, but Leslye’s so great with rehearsal, that even without a lot of time, we would get to set, read through the scene, and figure it out. The Adam Brody scene, which I think plays so funny, and he’s so funny in it, but meanwhile, Laney’s going through really deep emotions! And it’s just one of those things, when we first got there, it was like, “Here’s the super serious version. Here’s the more silly version. Where’s the happy medium?” And once it finally clicked, everyone was like, “Ah, it’s clicking.” I think the same way, with the bottle fingering scene, that even going into it, Leslye was like, “All right guys, I hope this doesn’t turn out super creepy.” The more we did it, it ended up being sweet and romantic, I think. It was just great, and educational!
Q: With all of the references you made, you really reveal yourself as a movie nerd.
LH: You mean the movie references? Yes, absolutely! I’m a human. Speaks English. All of the references were very planned. I’m a huge, huge film nerd; really, it’s my first love, it’s my only love. Literally, the first shot is clipped from ‘The Shining’, that’s a shot from ‘The Shining’. When she sees Sobhichev on the bridge, that’s a sequence from ‘Jaws’. Jake’s first line to her, the ginger reference, is from ‘Casablanca’, and is also referenced in ‘When Harry Met Sally’, not to mention all the references to ‘When Harry Met Sally’, including the text montage. It’s almost exactly like the voiceover, when they’re on the phone with each other. It’s how people will spend their whole days interacting with each other, even though they may never see each other. Especially ‘Graduate’ references, from ‘The Graduate’… it’s a great film, I get a little bored after Mrs. Robinson leaves, but she deserves her own movie… Maybe that’s the next one. But yeah, they were all very planned. I think it’s just because I love movies. I think even the last shot, her and Ann… I love movies. I love referencing them, because they are my church, they’re my lover, they’re my friends. In a weird way, when you’re referencing things, you’re just saying thank you for being there, in a weird way. You’re just saying, “Thank you for giving me a chance to do this, and as a result, I’m going to give you a loving butt tap.” ‘The Graduate’ booty touch. Hashtag that, guys. I don’t know how to spell it.
Q: Can you illuminate us on the choreography of the fight scene? How was that all worked out?
JS: It was always… in the script, both Alison’s sex scene, and my sex scene, with Amanda, with the character, and the fight scene, were all conceived in the written way as being done in masters – only one shot, all the information. For the sex scenes, it’s a nice little lithmus test, seeing what kind of gumption the people reading it would have. It was like, “Would you be willing to do this? We’re not going to have you do this.” I asked him if we were really going to show d’s in b’s and penetration, the day before… Not that I’m shy with that kind of stuff. I just made the assumption that we probably would be bucking for an NC-17. But the fight scene maintained that, and it was done with that one tracking shot. I can’t remember how many takes we did; it was really hot that day. We had to do the fight choreography, with great stunt guys, and that was probably a couple of hours, and little bit, piece by piece, learning it. It was kind of like a dance – this, and this, and this, and sort of added things to it. Adam was super into it. He and I had tons of mutual friends, as well; we all kind of met during this movie. Pertaining to the fight scene, it was very intimate. You don’t want to hurt someone, or get a boner, or not get a boner. There’s all this stuff – your right brain’s in a different mode than your left brain. You’ve got to hit your mark, but you can’t hit it too hard. We’re just constantly checking in, right-click, and the foley sound effects help. It really makes it look like I’m hitting him harder. I remember watching, before the sound was done, and I was like, “I look like a first season WWE wrestler.” I didn’t have quite the comfort level, as the rest of it, but I see it here, and it all flows. I was standing outside, and I heard you guys react to it. I heard the music shift. My friend Julian and I were like, “It sounds like a horror movie, all of a sudden!” I didn’t realize that until I was watching it, then you hear the audio, it helps tremendously, to add that visceral nature to the fight. It was just checking in – I think we did three takes of it, only. No cutaways, or anything like that. And that was all written.
Q: With the synergy of the cast, was that something that was difficult to conceive and get together and make it all work?
LH: I would love to speak to the cast, and how that all came together, but I can say that once everyone was together, I really put my entire heart on the line with this film, emotionally. I cried on every take – even funny takes. Coming up to them, and really giving them that energy, “here it is.” Really not speaking a lot, or giving a lot of direction, but just standing and in this case, with Jason and Ali and Eva, especially Adam… Adam Scott… I think I gave Adam one piece of direction, the whole movie. The energy was so reverberating, and really experiencing it, emotionally, telepathically, spiritually, with the actors, as opposed to dictating to them, “Do this thing.” Because I feel like many directors do not do this – I feel like it is my job to make myself emotionally vulnerable for the actors, and to stand there with them, and go, “I know this is hard.” I have lived these moments, not specifically in the movie, but I’ve had heartbreak. I’ve had romantic obsessions. I’ve had rage. And I want to be there with you guys, and I want to feel that with you. Once we’re together, I felt like that was the emotional glue that held us together. I don’t know if you want to talk about the actual physical act of putting everybody together, really brainstorming about who should be in this movie.
Q: Please tell us a little more about your creative process, Leslye.
LH: That’s a great question but really difficult to answer. It’s incredibly ethereal; it’s weird. I had an ex that called it “montage-ing”; I’ll just go out and walk around. I’ll listen to music, or see a lot of films. I’m inspired, definitely, by things that happen in real life. I think if you’re an aspiring writer, give yourself that time to just stew in it. A lot of the ideas that this movie came from, are nothing like this movie, if that makes sense. Even the first idea I had for this movie, the very first inkling, was to tell ‘Fatal Attraction’ from Glenn Close’s point of view. And that’s where I came up with the character of Laney. I was like, “What if we just told it really sympathetically?” This poor chick is REALLY obsessed with this guy, and he’s being a dick! And definitely Jake’s pattern, the way that he spoke – I don’t if I ever told you this – not really by Jason, who I really wanted to work with, but I remember seeing Jen going… and watching Christoph Waltz just talk people into everything. I was like, “What if there was a dude who could just talk his way into everything!” His motive, instead of revenge, was just pussy. There’s this weird little balls that go on. For me, the creative process is just noticing which ones fall by the wayside, as you continue to gestate the idea, and you start doing drafts, and re-writes, and then starting to collaborate with the actors and getting their input, The wheat gets separated from the chaff, and you start to really see what the movie’s going to be, and what the story’s going to be. As far as comedy goes, which is really what your original question was, I had no idea that I was a funny writer. When I first did this, when I first started producing my plays, in black box theaters and basements and stuff. I was just mortified, when people started laughing at it. I thought I had written ‘Glengary Glenn Ross’, and I was like, “Here you are. The female voice of a generation.” And people were just like, laughing, they were dying, and I was just like, “God damn it!” No one is ever going to take me seriously. I think the key to comedy is, don’t write jokes, write people. I put that in a piece I wrote, about last night, this kind of heart thing that I wrote. I really don’t come from a place of jokes. I’ve gotten better at writing them, I think, but I really want to start with the characters. People are very funny, and pain is very funny. You can just trust that, if you’re working on something, that’s coming from your heart. If you want it to be funny, don’t worry too much about… but maybe you’ll disagree, though, with, like, SNL, and Joe Friday, and things like that. I just come from a place of “Are these people speaking truthfully?”
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Of all the issues I had with A Walk in the Woods (our review) – the telling of Bill Bryson’s failure to complete the Appalachian Trail – Nick Nolte was not amongst them. In fact, he was the solitary beacon of hope shining through a film that otherwise stank of mediocrity. After the screening, the infamously crazed actor looked older than ever, shambling to a chair with the help of friends and family. You see, following the filming of Woods, Nolte had a full hip replacement. His spirits, medium-high, he sat to ironic applause and answered a few ambling questions with surprising tact and clarity. For such a wild man, Nolte has an astute, somewhat rambling outlook on nature, film and the great American trail. And nothing can beat out that gruffalo growl of his.
Q: Did you do all your own stunts while filming A Walk in The Woods?
Nick Nolte: Yeah, I did everything, except the one fall. Bob did that. We didn’t think we could survive it, but we felt that we had an obligation to finish the film. It was truly amazing area. It was like an hour-and-a-half to the location, by car or van, and there were the camels, or donkeys, and a couple of horses, and four-wheeled vehicles. And Bob would ride up on a horse. I was going to try a camel – he spit a lot – but I went up on a four-wheeler instead. The trouble was that they wouldn’t let Bob hold the reins of the horse. I guess they felt questionable over insurance responsibilities. So Bob got upset, and walked up the hill, which was quite brave of him. I always admired him for that. We’d get up there, and there he’d be… and of course all the guys would be up there and they’d say, “Oh, this is a great part of the trail. We can shoot this and this and this.” He would go up to the edge of the cliff, “Oh, you can come up here.” Well, let’s look at it first. Look out over everywhere. I thought we would run into a lot of hikers; we didn’t. We had to use a lot of actors, you know, to be hikers. Not a lot of people ever finish the Appalachian Trail. There are people who have walked it, straight through. It’s not a one summer deal. There are people who walk it for years. The trail runs about two miles from my farm in New York. There’s just a stake stamped into the ground, you know, a metal stake. And it’s up to the states to take care of the trail. It’s an amazing trail, because it had Thomas Jefferson’s dad’s initials up there, because he always said about the Appalachians that it was the barrier of America. We didn’t know what was west of that. It was quite a discovery, when we came upon that.
Q: Would you say that this filming experience changed you in any way?
NN: Oh, yeah. Every film does. They all change you. With this one, there’s a broader perspective. First of all, I didn’t ever imagine I’d be playing a contemporary guy. I’m not necessarily an easy contemporary person. I have a lot of nervousness and anxiety, fear and such… It was very strange to be getting into that, when you’re at this moment, just now, this is it, this is what we play. And Bob, too, I know it’s a struggle with Bob. Originally it was supposed to be Paul Newman and Bob, and Paul died. Paul had offered me a role in a cowboy film he had, and it took a week for me to read, three or four times, and finally told Paul, “Look, it’s a deputy that has to transport ten hookers from his town to another town. I don’t quite understand the humor.” And Paul said, “That’s exactly what Redford says!” We did agree on that.
Q: You said that the third main character of the film was the trail. One of the threads that runs through is the exfoliation of the whole forest, the appreciation of the environment, the whole thing, the awe and wonder of the natural world. How do you see that, given the crises the natural world is in, and the responsibility of the society to see that?
NN: Awe is probably the quality that the artist tries to achieve. But nature itself achieves it. Any activity that goes beyond what we think can be done, and it goes beyond that, creates a state of awe. It’s a very important state, and it’s very hard to create that, on film, or athletics, or whatever. Nature is a great provider of that, and that’s why we’ve got to… we can’t let it become mundane to us. We can’t get egotistical about nature, and consider it secondary, and “Oh, I’ve seen that.” No, you haven’t seen that. You haven’t seen what nature can do. We do have to become partners with it.
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At the premiere of his debut horror/thriller Creep, director and star Patrick Brice took to the stage to put some A’s to some Q’s and give some context for his found-footage creeper. But Brice’s film;s greatest accomplishment lies in the performance eeked from Mark Duplass. He’s magnetic, unpredictable and an absolute joy to watch. From our review,
“No matter how valiant his intentions sound on paper, Joseph (Duplass) is an unreliable character from the get go. From his startling first appearance to the unsavory wolf mask, ironically called Peach Fuzz, he keeps stuffed in his closet, he’s a hard guy to get a read on. But that’s half the fun. Throttling between waxing on his own mortality and jumping from behind a doorway to startle Patrick (and by extension us), one thing is for certain: Joseph’s a weird dude. He’s always quick on his toes to offer some soundbite explanation for his abnormal actions but his backstory is about as reliable and consistent as Heath Ledger‘s Joker.”
Revealing his long standing friendship with co-star Duplass, Brice talked stalker behavior, the colloborative nature of Creep and how he went from an artsy filmmaker to directing a found footage horror movie. Read on to hear all he had to say.
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How did you get Mark involved in the film?
Patrick Brice: Mark Duplass and I are close friends. I just graduated from Cal Arts film school in 2011. He was kind of mentoring me and trying to figure out what the next project would be. We’d talked about working together on something. This project came out of those conversations. He just said, “Why don’t we go do something together?” So we went up to a cabin in the woods for five days and filmed an initial cut of this movie and ended up showing it to friends, doing some test screenings with filmmaker buddies – kind of refining it and toning it into the film that it is now. Eventually Jason Blum, from Blumhouse, watched the film, liked it, and agreed to kind of help us make it a little darker.
When you were writing it, was it tempting to turn it more into comedy and change the ending? Or did you know that you wanted it like this?
PB: We had no idea. There was like seven different versions of that ending. And I’m sorry I’m totally low blood sugar today. I’ve only eaten tacos for a meal. I can’t (EDITED FOR SPOILERS). I’m having an existential crisis. There was sort of a weird test, because we knew we wanted it to be funny and Mark’s insanely funny and gifted with improv. Jason saw it and was like, “You guys, this is teetering on the edge. Let’s bring this a little more into the realm of darkness.” It’s kind of a weird balance but hopefully it will work for some people.
Your movie reminds me of someone I know. I’m not even kidding.
PB: Mark and I, we love weird people and we love people that you can’t really get a serious beat on. We also are both the type of dudes who end up being friends with those people. This was kind of our exploration into that.
His behavior was kind of textbook stalker. How much research did you do on stalking behaviors and stuff like that?
PB: I didn’t do research whatsoever. One discussion we did have was talking about people we’ve known in our lives who are like pathological liars – just thinking about traits of those type of people and trying to express that.
I find it thrilling, because it’s clearly so stripped down and just like you have a great idea and a great story. You made it happen. I would love to hear what you shot on. Was it literally you and Mark? Did you have a small crew?
PB: We had a small crew and actually one of them is here, Chris Donlon, our editor. This guy’s a story genius and we wouldn’t have been able to do what we did, without him. We shot it on one of these Panasonic cameras that compresses to a small card. It was a great exercise for me. Coming out of film school, I was like, “I’m going to make very defined, formal films.” This was just like throwing that all by the wayside and saying, “Let’s just go run completely on instinct, and forget about aesthetic as much as we can and just try to make something that’s compelling and focused on characters.”
Were you holding the camera the whole time?
PB: Yeah. It was either me or Mark holding the camera the entire time.
How much of this do you guys do in tandem? Did you direct each other?
PB: Yeah. The film was a collaboration. When Mark was on screen, I was directing him and when I was on screen, he was directing me. Neither of us had any ego with that sort of thing. A lot of these takes were initially six or seven minute takes that have been cut up. So we would just run each take. We didn’t have a script. We had a ten page outline, we were just improvising all the dialogue, so we would run one of these takes, watch it, figure out camera placement and what we should say when, go back and do it over and over again. Because it was just a small group of us, we could do that.
Were you developing the characters as you went along?
PB: I had never acted before, so I was relying on Mark in terms of what was working and what was not. It’s super hard to be objective when you’re directing yourself. We kind of went scene by scene. It was a story we develop, in reaction to whatever nuances happened in the last thing we shot. We shot it all in continuity. But we still have that outline that was like, “This needs to happen within these parameters.”
All the paintings of the wolves, who did those?
PB: My best friend since I was 11 years old, his mom did all those. She just paints multiples of those wolves. That’s like what she does. I was so happy I got to include them. That’s something we used to always make fun of his mom about when we were kids. Now it’s like, “Jason, can I get like 50 of those paintings?”
I love how the end opens up all these side possibilities of what happens before and what happens after. One of the things I’m wondering about Mark Duplass’s character is: when you were developing a backstory for him, does he have a similar approach to all his victims? Does he take them all to the heart springs? Is this something you talked about at all?
PB: No. Not really. I think there’s a world of possibilities there. I don’t think he’s done this before. In my mind I like to think that he has something special for each person. Or maybe he doesn’t (SPOILER) everybody. Maybe it takes a special someone, to want to (SPOILER) them.
How did the concept for the movie come about?
PB: At first this movie was like a relationship movie, I guess. We weren’t necessarily thinking that it was going to go as far as it did, in terms of evil. We wanted it to be a balance between the two of us. I do think there’s something wrong with Aaron. Don’t do that.
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After winning the special jury award for Best Narrative Feature, Fort Tilden saw a little bit of backlash from the critical public, many of them unconvinced that it was necessarily a deserving winner. But this can be expected of a noncommittal culture, more suited to complaining after the fact than making a decision. But this is neither here nor there (although I personally rather enjoyed the film) and the decision can be chalked up to the fact that a committee of only three are responsible for selecting the winners for any given category.
Regardless of this odd rocking of the boat that Fort Tilden has ushered, it’s a wonderful picture of big city ineptitude. From our review,
“Unfit for a seemingly painless journey such as this, watching this odd couple mess their way through the “rough” spots of the city is co-writers and directors Sarah Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers’ condemnation of an incomptent age of the e-tarded. Destitude without their iPhones, never able to look three steps into their futures and wholly lost without an aiding stranger, Allie and Harper are the bane of the millenials.”
Fort Tilden is at its core an absurdist, girls running amuck in NYC dramedy and is the product of directorial duo Sarah Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers. Here to talk about millennials, discovering the actresses and getting naked at the beach, read on to see how Tilden came to be.
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Can you talk a little bit about how you collaborate? How do you divide up all of the duties?
Sarah-Violet Bliss: There isn’t much division of our responsibilities. We sat at the computer next to each other writing all day. It wasn’t one of those, you write five pages and then show it to your partner. You have your every day, nine to five, writing jobs, and on the side, two people with the same thoughts, and also some different thoughts that would collaborate in a way that gave the film a voice of its own.
Charles Rogers: I don’t think it would have been possible to co-direct, without having co-written. I think the process was inseparable. In that way, we both knew what the vision for the film was, even though we might have had a different angle on it, they were angles that would inevitably come together. We both were always on the same page. Otherwise, I don’t know what it would have looked like.
Had you worked together before?
SVB: No. This was our first collaboration.
CR: We’ve been friends, but this was our first collaboration. Nine months ago, we didn’t even know necessarily that we were going to be making this film. We had the idea at the very beginning of the summer, and we wrote it in six weeks, and we produced in that amount of time.
I loved it. Obviously, you guys won, so it’s a great film. I laughed through the whole thing. You guys are older than millennials so how did you get in touch with your qualities of millenials? What do you think they are and how do you represent them?
SVB: I’m technically Generation-Y, but I think I’m friends with millenials. There’s a blend. I’m kind of on the cusp, so I feel like it wasn’t too hard to tap into that.
CR: A lot of it was stuff that we were thinking about in our own issues. Our own issues ended up working their way into the film and that’s sort of what’s hard in the writing process, if you know that going in to it or not. Also, just drawing from friends and people that we knew. We have a lot of friends who do absurd things and I guess there’s a particular kind of absurdity that comes with the millennial generation. That wasn’t hard to draw from, when it’s all around you.
Tell me a little about the production in New York. It looks great. Were you just stealing shots? What kind of channels did you go through and were there any challenges or tricks?
SVB: We tried to permit as much as possible. We had our things covered for a lot of it and then there were a lot of things that we had to steal. There’s always a lot of great stuff to put in front of the camera but that also comes with a lot of challenges.
CR: We met so many characters along the way. The type of people who would come up to me, they were always very specific to the kind of neighborhood that you were in. So the girls go on a journey from home and we sort of also went on a journey. There’s just a lot of different kinds of neighborhoods and every day was a different flavor because of that.
I was just wondering about the two actresses. Were they a comedy team?
SVB: They had never met before we cast them. Ally, the blonde, is one of my best friends from college and she’s been in a lot of my short films and we work together a lot. We discovered Bridy Eliot, who plays Harper, and we took them to dinner when she was in town and it was really good chemistry. We all really got along. They worked phenomenally together and hopefully they continue to. This was their first collab.
When you say you “discovered her,” how did you discover her?
CR: She was concussed on the side of the road and… Bridy Eliot is a comedian and performer in the Upright Citizens Brigade. It’s a major comedy theater in New York. She has a presence in the comedy world but she hasn’t really been in a lot of films. This is both their sort of break out role. It was great to find out on the first day that we cast right. We knew it going into it, because we felt, but when you’re on set there’s that first day where you’re nervous. Getting to see them perform on the first day was like, “We don’t have to worry about this!”
Do you guys want to talk a little bit about your background before you came to this film?
SVB: We both went to NYU grad film school together. We’re still there. That’s where I’ve been making my shorts, through film school. Before that, I was a theater major at Oberlin, which is where I met Claire. I’ve been writing plays and stuff for a really long time. After I graduated, I was actually more interested in film. I became more of a filmmaker than a playwright.
CR: I went to college here and then I went to grad school at NYU. I’m not from New York necessarily. I do a lot of comedy and improv and standup in New York, which is cool because I want to do a lot of comedy and I get to know a lot of the talent pool in New York. I feel like it’s nice when you can see all of your worlds coming together. I feel like this film did that for me.
What were the themes that were most important to you about this idea of challenging friendship or friendships that indicate more about the challenges that you have yourself with your actual relationship that you have with the other person? Were there certain ideas that you hoped would carry throughout the film?
CR: We were drawing from different life experiences. I think one part of the millennial generation – the idea of this age – is that you get to this point in your life where you start to evaluate all of your friendships. Before this point, your friendships are out of convenience or commonalities that are more trivial. And the older you get, you begin to sort of focus in on what’s important to you and what actually matters to you. You begin to realize that the people you thought mattered to you, there’s issues there. Before this age, I don’t think that you necessarily evaluate those things. I was drawing from some difficult relationships that I had, but also there were people that I love, and don’t want out of my life. All relationships are really hard.
SVB: The themes are stuff that we really discovered while writing and developing what we were writing originally. We thought it would be a funny idea to have two characters who were trying to get to Fort Tilden, except their not really good at stuff. As we were writing, we really discovered more of what was actually very compelling to us and about what it means to be 25 right now… and how the older generations, the parents of these millenials, feel like, “Oh you can be whatever you want to be.” And not really thinking about their responsibilities and pursuing that in a really hardworking way, just expecting that it’s going to happen. You get taken by surprise, when you realize that you’ve got to take some control over that.
Sounds like you might know some of these people.
SVB: Sure.
CR: Yeah.
You keep bringing up the comedic elements of this, but there was also a lot of drama to this story. Did it start out as a comedy and then you kind of found these dramatic beats? Or did it start out as more of a drama but then developed into a comedy?
SVB: The original idea we had was: “This is a funny idea.” All the work that I’ve done in my past at least – Charles too – there’s always some more dramatic depth to it. That’s what I think makes the comedy better and the drama better. They are opposites that flatter each other. Really it was just about making something truthful and making the story richer. We never were like, “This is a COMEDY.” It develops into what it develops into. That’s my favorite kind of work to create.
CR: I think the fact that it started with characters, rather than an idea about the tone or the genre, I think it got both funnier and sadder. I don’t think it necessarily started out as one or the other. The more we understood the comedy, the more we understood how that related to drama. I think that the fact that it gets sadder makes it funnier and the fact that it gets funnier makes it sadder. These characters, ultimately, are very flawed. The comedy comes from that, but also the struggle has to come from that too. So I think it sort of started in a simple place, then everything layered outside of that.
I love that they all had their tops off at the beach. I wondered who’s idea that was, or if they actually do that out there.
CR: It’s an unmonitored beach, so a lot of people do end up taking their tops off.
SVB: Knowing that that’s a place where people go to be cool and free or whatever, and then the idea that someone would be put in that situation and feel uncomfortable by feeling like that’s the cool decision to do.
CR: Our actresses were very comfortable with the toplessness. Everything was consensual.
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“Never give up, never surrender,” Alan Rickman famously peeped out in Galaxy Quest. “Live long and prosper,” the wise Spock gently reinforced. “The force is with you,” Ol’ Ben loved to chime in every now and then. But it’s the iconic words of a toy, “To infinity and beyond,” that have come to describe the sci-fi space explorer mantra: that there are no limitations, no furthest reaches. But what if you were content just floating around space? Not conquering anything, not plotting any universe-saving diplomatic truces, not battling off malevolent, oddly-shaped aliens? That’s the question Jack Plotnik asks in his endlessly funny Space Station 76 and the results are blisteringly good.
Though always quick with a joke, Plotnik’s film works so well because it seeks to understand rather than mock its motley crew of characters. From our review,
“At the forefront of this final frontier are an unlikely cast of characters, each representative of the many uncertainties and insecurities of the era. There’s the boredom weary housewife, Misty, who spends her days slurping down Prosacs, her down-on-his-luck everyman husband, Ted, new co-pilot Jessica who is at her core representative of the shifting winds of the feminism movement, and Captain Glenn (played by Patrick Wilson with startling sensitivity), the pinnacle of Plotnik’s satirical heights.”
Jack sat down to talk about the appeal of the 70s, the indefiniteness of space, the process of writing as a team, the challenges of making a low budget sci-fi flick, and whether he could ever reasonably see Space Station 76 as a TV program.
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I think the most burning question here is where did this idea come from?
Jack Plotnik: To set a movie in the future, but imagined from the 70’s? Is that what you mean?
Yeah. The concept is wonderful but it’s so wacky. How did you cook it up?
JP: I came up with this idea. It was about eight years ago. I had wanted to write a play that would explore what it was like to grow up in the 70’s in the suburbs. I just thought it would be more interesting way to go about it, to set it in this future that we dreamed of that was never actually realized. It symbolized, for a lot of people, what it was like to grow up at that time where you thought things were going to be a certain way and they didn’t quite turn out that way. I’ve always been obsessed with this 70’s future. My family went to Disney World in the 70’s and I rode the monorail. I just thought, “We’re going to be on Moon colonies soon.” Everything was possible in the 70’s. Of course, now looking back, my parents divorced in the 80’s and I can see now the trials and tribulations they had in the suburbs. You look back and see things didn’t quite turn out the way you expected.
This film also seems like it would work really well as a series. What made you decide on the format of a feature film?
JP: Well it’s really easy to say, “Why don’t you do a series?” It’s actually really tough to get a show on the air. If you don’t have experience as a show runner, what tends to happen is you sell your ideas to somebody who has already created a TV show and then they run it. This was a very specific story that I wanted to tell, a very personal one. A lot of what was in my life as a kid was in this movie. So I wanted to tell this particular story, however, before a movie I was thinking of a show and I would love that to happen. I’ve already been thinking about what adjustments I would have to make to have this be a TV show. I love that you said that.
In the film, there’s all these kind of absurd, goofball, ridiculous concepts going on, but they frame some really potent issues. What for you was the launching pad of for going, “We’re going to make this futuristic, sci-fi, low-brow comedy, but at the same time bury these important issues within it?”
JP: That’s the type of artist I am. I love mixing genres, because I think the human condition is: life is really hard but it’s also really funny. Life can be painful and sometimes people can be mean. To me, my favorite kind of comedy comes with a pinch of sadness or devastation. Some of my favorite artists, their movies are uncomfortable comedy. They’re comic drama. I always have had an appreciation for that. In terms of the heavy messages going on, I can’t help that I want things to also be funny. There were some things I wanted to say about the pain of growing up in that time in the suburbs. At the same time, I didn’t want it to be a straight up drama, because I’m a pretty silly guy and I like to laugh. This seemed like a fun way to explore that without being too heavy.
Patrick Wilson in this film is absolutely brilliant. His character is hysterical and heartbreaking at the same time.
JP: Now that you say that, I think that’s a nice way to put the movie.
What was writing his character like, for you personally?, He’s dealing with this issue of coming out and concealing his homosexuality and it’s clearly not acceptable at the time. What kind of statement did you want to make with his character?
JP: To me, sometimes it’s just a matter of just showing, and that’s all the statement you need to make. We’re sort of examining what it was and what that would be like, for people who don’t know what that’s like to see it and have some empathy. I co-wrote this film and a lot of Glenn’s work came from one writer, Sam Pancake, and he did a beautiful job. Glenn’s more suicidal tendencies came from me. I thought that would be an interesting way to deal with the very real pain that people go through with that kind of self-hatred. So the idea is that Glenn wants to kill himself but the ship won’t let him.
That’s hysterical but it’s also so real at the same time.
JP: Patrick Wilson is just so not this guy. He just walked on set with this, I think, iconic character I’ve never seen him play, yet I feel like this character has always been around. I’ve never seen a character quite like this, yet you feel like, “Oh I know this guy.” I love what he did with it.
Let’s talk more about the writers, because you just mentioned that you worked with a whole team of writers. There were five of you credited with the film. What was that writing process like? Why so many writers? In the future, would you go with such a collaborative effort again, or would you rather just focus on your own project?
JP: Well I love working with other people. I’m a collaborative writer. I co-wrote and directed the off Broadway musical, Disaster, that we hope to bring to Broadway later this year. I just like to do it that way. What happened was that I came up with the idea for Space Station 76 and I just jabbered around my favorite actors at the moment – funny, funny, smart people. For three months, I would direct them and through improv they created these characters. I would record the sessions, type them out, and then I would sort of sift through it and pick the best stuff. Then I would try to give that back to the actors. So the scenes grew out of improv. Then, in order to turn it into a movie, we needed to open up the world, and I added some characters, and did some more work on it. I love writing with other people and creating as a group. At the same time, it was very important that I also look at it from the big picture and keep the focus, so it’s one work of art and not five. I do think it’s all very much one voice coming through that film.
I definitely agree with you. It actually kind of surprised me when I saw so many writers on it, because typically you would think it would be more jarring, but no not at all.
JP: I think everybody understood what I was going for and I handpicked people who are smart and funny and have the same sense of humor as I do. They nailed it and I just love those guys.
Speaking of that sense of humor, my favorite character in the film is Dr. Bot. That was such a hysterical role.
JP: He’s a very small android. He’s a robot therapist who lead characters can see, but only Misty, the frustrated housewife, tends to go to him. I’m glad you liked him.
Totally. He’s the cult character to pull from the film. With Dr. Bot, was there any kind of statement that you were trying to make about the mental health community, or is this more just playing it straight for comedy?
JP: Everything in this film is commenting on a specific time and place of what it was like in the 70’s and what people were doing, what they were up to. There’s a few things going on with Dr. Bot. One of the big things about this film is it’s really about people who can’t connect, in general how hard it is these days to connect with one another. I just find it interesting that this character who is a frustrated housewife in the unhappy marriage, the only person she connects to in the film is this tiny robot. And to really connect with him, she ends up having to turn him off. One thing I love about him is that the sound effects were done by Denny Bird at Skywalker Sound. His father did the sounds for the original Star Wars movies. Denny did an amazing job. He added so much to this film. One of the things he did is he added a wonderful sound of Dr. Bot thinking. Whenever someone said something to him, you hear this looping sound. I believe it’s the sound of an old fashioned printer from the 70’s or 80’s. It’s so fun to watch Dr. Bot think and to see how his brain works.
This being your directorial debut, at least on the big screen, can you tell me about a couple things that were surprisingly hard that caught you off guard by how difficult they were? And then other things that you thought were going to be really hard but ended up being surprisingly easy.
JP: In terms of how hard it is to make a feature, my friend Richard Day who wrote and directed Girls will be Girls that I produced and starred in, he said, “Doing this film is going to be the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life.” And then, “You’re going to want to immediately do it again.” He said it’s going to miserable and horrible and everything is going to look like all is lost. There’s definitely those moments. Specifically, there are just so many moving pieces. I had a great team around me, amazing producers and the whole crew. Actually shooting went fairly smoothly. The hardest part, I would say, was pre-production, getting everything ready. We had to build a spaceship on a soundstage in the valley. But the actual shooting went incredibly smoothly and I think the thing that surprised me was how they come and they’re just ready to play, if you get the right actors. It was just amazing to watch them show up on set and do what they do. It was just facilitating it. Especially that little girl, the girl Kylie Rogers played, she is a genius. She was just the one-take wonder. She somehow knew what every scene was about and would really get it in never more than two takes. She astounded me. That was a real joy to discover her and we were lucky to find her.
She was lovely in the film. Obviously, you were under budgetary constraints, this being a little independent feature that you’re then doing in space, the CG is not astounding. Would you want it any other way, though? Would you rather have had big production values on the asteroids and space station, or do you feel like this was kind of perfectly suiting for what it was?
JP: Well I would have loved to have millions of dollars, yes. A film like this it’s not quite the tone people are used to. You come to a spaceship, you tend to think, “I’m either going to get a goofball comedy like Spaceballs or a space-adventure comedy like Galaxy Quest.” People don’t quite expect to see a science fiction movie about suburban life in space. Hopefully people get that. Sometimes the characters can be mean to each other. You can also laugh at it all. I personally love comedies that are uncomfortable, like the British Office. In terms of the budget, we had enough money and also the mother of invention is necessity. So it was always exciting when we didn’t actually have the millions of dollars to build what we wanted to build. It was exciting to find the other way to do it and we always were able to. I’m just proud of what my set designer pulled off and the costumes. There’s really nothing I would change. The sets are gorgeous. I’m really thrilled. I mean maybe with a little extra money we could have been 3-D.
Earlier you mentioned that when you made this film, someone told you that it would be the hardest thing you’ll ever do but you would want to get right back on that horse. Have you already started thinking about a new project?
JP: Absolutely. I have several things. My immediate plan is to direct my musical, Disaster!. You can read about it at Disastermusical.com if you want to see it in New York. The plan is to direct that on Broadway in the fall. So I’ve got to do that. But then, yeah, again I love that you said Space Station as a TV series because we have already kind of been thinking about that and talking about it. And there’s a couple film scripts that I’m working with other people on.
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