A Director & His Non-Supporting Characters

"Supporting Characters" is on the Film Festival Circuit

A Director & His Non-Supporting Characters

(from brinkzine.com 5/8/12)

 Karpovsky, Schechter, Lowe Photo by DP

At the recent Tribeca Film Festival everybody was reserving their praise for documentaries and serious narratives, but there was one comedy that was good as any of them, Supporting Characters. Director Daniel Schechter's delightfully quirky character piece is a consistently witty and observant picture with some terrific lead performances. It was pitched by the festival as "a truly masculine romantic comedy" because it's about the relationship between two males, best friends and skilled movie-editing partners Nick (Alex Karpovsky, an indie favorite who is now seen on HBO's Girls) and Darryl (Tarik Lowe, who cowrote the semiautobiographical film with Schechter). But women will surely recognize this nonthreatening, well-meaning duo from their own "not-so-bad-but-good-riddance" lists and get a kick out of watching them systematically sabotage their relationships with, respectively, "perfect girlfriend" Amy (Sophia Takal) and the not-particularly-interested dancer Liana (Melonie Diaz). (Also to be appreciated are the fine performances by the three female leads, as well as a bit by Lena Dunham.) Nick has a super relationship but he still emails his ex-girlfriend and begins a flirtation with Jamie (Arielle Kebbel), the star of the movie being edited. Darryl wrongly believes he too has a super relationship and will propose...in public. As finishing the movie becomes increasingly problematic, so do Nick's and Darryl's relationships with their girlfriends and each other. At the festival, I had a lively breakfast with Schechter (C in photo), Lowe (R), and Karpovsky (L) and we discussed their funny movie.
Danny Peary: Supporting Characters starts out with a bad test screening of the film Nick and Darryl are editing. Did you have test screenings for this film?
Daniel Schecter: Yes. I edited this movie, which isn't always the wisest thing for a director to do, and I found test screenings were valuable because we got some really good feedback. In the movie we have a running joke in which Nick wants to cut a scene with Rodney the Doorman but Darryl disagrees. Well, we really had a couple of "Rodney the Doormen" actors who were in good scenes that we decided to cut because they didn't support the entire film.
DP: I would think you're still testing the film at Tribeca in a way. Are you getting laughs where you wanted them?
DS: I don't think the screenings could have gone any better. I'm actually surprised by how many laughs there are in the movie. We didn't necessarily go out of our way to make it as funny as possible and there were times when I even toned down people, but Tarik and Alex are so good together and people seem to love their characters and chemistry, so there has been a lot of laughter. If I have any insecurities about a new film it's usually early on, and I think this film gets better as it goes along. I don't think I'll change the movie after the festival; it's as tight and sharp as I'm going to get it.
DP: I read that this is a semiautobiographical film about your friendship with Tarik. Did you two get to know each other while working as editors?
DS: No, I have a background in editing but Tarik is an actor. We were buddies and wanted to create a vehicle for him. He was writing on the side and I liked his writing a lot so we decided to do something mean and lean together.
Tarik Lowe: We were introduced by a mutual friend named Sebastian Sozzii, who is in the film. We hit it off immediately. I have always had trouble finding anyone, including friends, to read my writing, but everything I sent to Dan he read. I used him as the person to critique me and make me a better writer.

Lowe and Karpovsky

DP: Do the two of you have a rhythm when you talk similar to that of Darryl and Nick?
DS: It is almost exactly the same as the two people in the movie. In fact, for two or three scenes that we were writing, we'd turn on a recording device and improvise the scenes in character. We'd do about four takes and then whittle it down to the best stuff. This all came about because whenever we'd go out with friends they'd laugh at our exchanges--I think we came across as sort of a weird, charming duo.
DP: Nick and Darryl know everything about each other. Is that a reflection of your real relationship?
DS: Definitely. Maybe it's a reflection that we're both artists, but we tend to talk a lot about deeply personal things. We've known each other for only about two years and there's a lot we don't know about each other but Tarik is maybe now my closest friend.
DP: With my close male friends, I talk about movies and sports.
DS: It is unusual that we don't. I find it very difficult at this point of my life to make new friends, which is what I find unique about our relationship. Maybe it's just the nature of the people I hang out with, who are single, that makes us talk about personal things. Sometimes I'm very confessional with new groups of people and I'm aware of how bizarre that is and pull back.
DP: In writing this and working with Alex, I'm wondering if you two examined your relationship at all, without actually saying, "Hey, let's talk about our relationship."
TL: I think we knew what our relationship is and our task was to flesh it out for a script. We probably understood each other better after writing the film but a lot of it was established and it was just a matter of putting it down on paper.
DS: There's a big subplot about how Nick and Darryl are business partners too and that causes a lot of tension in their relationship. Tarik and I are just friends, not business partners, so we don't have that kind of tension in our relationship...usually.
DP: So it didn't bring up any sore points between you?
DS: No, but sometimes we'd improvise scenes and get into it and I'm not an actor so I would feel uncomfortable afterwards. For example after doing improv on the scene in which Nick tells Darryl he's taking the next job by himself there was some tension between us.
DP: There is also some black-white dialogue and a couple of times a line is crossed.
TL: We discuss race all the time.
DS: One time when Nick says something to him about "not getting married but having a lot of kids instead," he is crossing the line. But he's not coming from a place of racism, he's just trying to be funny all the time and pop that bubble--sometimes that's a big bubble to pop and it splashes back in his face. That's what happens. Nick just likes poking Darryl. I just like poking Tarik. If he were bald, that's what I'd make fun of. Whatever Darryl's sore spot is, what would make him insecure and self-conscious, that's what Nick keeps poking.
DP: Alex, Tarik is kind of playing himself, but you're kind of playing Daniel. Does that make it easier or harder coming in as an outsider?
Alex Karpovsky: It's easier because I had the reference. Dan was working in front of me so if I got confused about my character I could just ask him. It was easy to navigate, which was nice. But I should say that I didn't think Dan wanted me to play a clone of himself so I had a pretty long leash to play with stuff and bring in my own stuff. I didn't feel I had to draw too heavily from Dan but I could always get guidance from him.
DP: Dan, I've known you five minutes but you come across as very energetic while Nick in the film, like Alex, is more subdued.
DS: Alex has a calm, confident magnetism that I don't have. I'm self-conscious and fidgety, so I enjoy watching how he is. I enjoy his presence much more than if I had played Nick myself. There is something magnetic, sexy, and smart about Alex that people respond to in all the films he does, especially this character.
AK: What was different about his movie is that I had never before acted in a movie that wasn't directed by a friend of mine. Dan emailed me or facebooked me out of the blue. I didn't know him at all. He said he was interested in working with me and asked if he could send this script. So that was very different and wonderful. I was nervous working with someone whose sensibilities I didn't know but after he sent me the script I felt that, wow, I couldn't fuck it up too bad. He told me to see Albert Brooks' Modern Romance because that was a big influence on this. I loved it so I knew this was going to be good.
DS: That movie holds up. Tarik and I watched it about six months before shooting our movie. There were about four of us dying laughing. It's also a film where the filmmaking stuff is secondary to the romantic comedy aspect, and I wanted this to be the same way. It was an arbitrary choice that Nick and Darryl are editors--I just needed them to have a job to be at while they bitched about their girlfriends. It just happened to be great fun to work in that world and it was a great metaphor for editing your life and your work.
DP: In Modern Romance, Albert Brooks and Kathry Harrold keep breaking off and getting back together. Nick is still in touch with his previous girlfriend but I don't think he can ever revive that relationship or one with anybody else he break ups with. Is that accurate?
DS: The irony is that I based this on a tragic breakup I had gone through and I did get back with that person, which is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I don't want to give away the ending, but we do end on a bit of a sad note. We don't know what the future is with the characters but Nick certainly learns from his experience, as I did as well. Nick had been getting to work late and having Darryl do all the work but now he comes in early to begin their new project. He's thinking, "I'm going to be organized, I'm going to do better." I wanted to make a metaphor about relationships--if you screw it up, you learn from it, and hopefully do better in the next one, so don't beat yourself up.
DP: I considered that he's going back on the Internet not do work but to email his old girlfriend or to seek a new girlfriend. He has a history of finding a girlfriend online.
DS: That's the first I heard anyone say that, but it's valid. I had a flashback sequence there where we'd go back to his first date with Amy, and that would have made things even more confusing. I just wanted Nick and Darryl to have a fresh start.
DP: Contrast the two characters. Alex, your character doesn't realize how much he has with Amy. And, Tarik, your character thinks he has more than he has and rushes into his relationships. They have patterns.
AK: That's interesting. I've never psychoanalyzed it but I wonder if part of their friendship is that they're opposites and want an aspect of the other.
TL: I agree.
DS: I'm very susceptible to flattery. That's my insecurity. When I get any interest from a woman I become vastly more attracted to her. Tarik is the opposite. When women start treating him like crap and rejecting him, he likes them more.
TL: I almost don't like women who like me. A lot of the Liana stuff happened to me in real life. I would tell Dan about it and instead of giving me advice, he'd tell me we had to write it down. And he'd laugh really hard! I've been in relationships where I may have been taken advantage of, and I don't know if I've stopped yet.

 Tarik Lowe: Melonie Diaz
DP: The scene in the movie in Times Square in which Darryl walks Liana to another man's car reminds me of the scene in Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt, when Michel Piccoli allows his wife Brigitte Bardot climb alone into the two-seat sports car driven by crass producer Jack Palance and go where the three of them are going while he walks. She instantly falls out of love with him.
DS: It's so emasculating. That's a very flattering comparison.
DP: I love when Darryl tells Liana that they should get married because they're "good eighty percent of the time." That's enough for your character, Tarik, to think he should be with a woman for the rest of his life.
TL: I wrote that because I thought it would be a good argument to make. Darryl is just trying to convince Liana that they're right for each other. Throwing a stat at her is his last desperate attempt. Eighty percent is more than fifty percent, that's a good number!
AK (laughing): They're right for each other most of the time.
DS: I think we like to look at other couples to see where you stand.

DP: In the movie, when Amy tells Nick that she's seen his emails to his girlfriend on his computer, he starts to defend himself by telling her, "Being a guy isn't always easy," and then realizes that's the wrong approach and tries to explain it in a different way. But that line is really kind of the theme of the movie, isn't it?
DS: Sure. It's an argument most women should not have to and probably will never understand but it's what most guys think and is in the back of their minds. I just wanted it to be an honest line about guys.
AK: Nick should know better than to try to explain with that line to her. Dan, you said a lot of the movie, specifically that scene, is autobiographical. Did you really say something along those lines?
DS: No. But I thought that and of course I was smart enough to never say it out loud. I didn't want that scene to be funny--and there is a lot of tension if I did my job right--but I expected that line would get a laugh. I thought that line would break the tension and keep the tone balanced.
AK: It gets a tortured laugh.
DP: When you were saying that line did you realize it was important?
AK: To be honest, no. I didn't know that potentially it could reverberate and lasso in a bunch of themes of the movie. When I act, I try not to overthink things too often; if I tried to relate it to the big picture it might just have confused things and distanced me from the moment.
DS: That's one of those lines that I would have had to do a line reading for if it hadn't been done perfectly, but to Alex's credit, when he read that line, he immediately understood how to deliver it. He has great comic timing.
DP: What's the purpose of bringing in references to Nick's mother and their competitive relationship?
DS: I find that people are mostly influenced by their parents so if there are holes in them, it might often come from one or the other. I wanted to hint that there some reason behind Nick's behavior and his failed relationships with women. To me, it isn't a movie about a guy who cheats but a movie about a guy who has messed-up relationships with women, and I thought that it would give viewers some subtext as to why.
DP: I like when the DP loses an argument regarding the movie and complains about the lighting in the office.
TL: Great! Dan wanted to cut that and I fought so hard to keep it!
DS: I didn't think it made logical sense. But nobody would let me cut it.
TL: It's a great line. That was one of two things I fought for.
DP: When Nick is tempted to have an affair with the Jamie, the female lead in the movie they're editing, Darryl asks, "What if God is testing you?" And Nick counters with "What if God is rewarding me?"
TL: Dan and I always have debates over religion and the existence or God, and we were debating it during the writing of this film, so we wanted to have a scene where the characters discuss that.
DS: That's one of my favorite lines in the movie. I think the atheists' point of view often is that it's so arrogant to presume you know what God means, and it just cracks me up that Nick thinks this girl is his reward for being a great guy.
TL: Nick uses God when it benefits him in some way.
DP: One terrific scene has Nick going back and forth seductively with Jaime as she does postproduction dubbing in the recording booth, and getting her to say her lines perfectly, with an erotic bent. Of the two characters, Nick seems to the one who, like Dan, has potential to be a director.
DS: I think he can become a director. He has great taste, he's just not good at articulating what he wants. He's probably right that Jaime should say her line that way but he doesn't know hot to communicate it to her; she teaches him how to communicate with an actor, which is what I like about that scene.
AK: I agree that he has good sensibilities. He definitely nurtures his fantasies of wanting to be in charge of a movie. That comes out in the hallway fight scene. He's also a good editor, which is a huge part of the process and will benefit him if he becomes a director.
DS: He's also learning from other directors' mistakes.

DP: Talk about working together as actors. It seemed like you could be best friends and that you'd been hanging out for ten years.
AK: Thank you. Actually we didn't know each other at all. But we had the luxury of hanging out some before we shot and that usually doesn't happen on indie films. That was tremendously beneficial.
TL: Working with Alex is great because you can't throw him off. He's very intelligent and is one of those actors who is always ready no matter how things go. I learned every day working with him and we just had good chemistry that we exploited.
DP: Alex, you directed, cowrote, and star in another really good film at the festival, Rubberneck, which is genuinely creepy.
AK: There aren't many jokes in Rubberneck.
DS: (To Alex): Was your intention to do something that was completely dramatic or did you have an idea for a movie that was a drama?
AK: Well, both. I definitely wanted to do something very different and I wanted to do a thriller.
DP: Has the festival been great for you guys?
DS: I can't imagine a better festival. I'm not just saying this to be diplomatic but it's one of the greatest experiences I've ever had.

Group Photo at TFF (L-R): Tarik Lowe, Mike Landry, Arielle Kebbel, Daniel Schechter, Sophia Takal, Alex Karpovsky

I Wish "brilliantlove" for Everyone

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I Wish brilliantlove for Everyone

(from brinkzine.com 5/25/10)

Of my favorite films at the recent Tribeca Film Festival, none got me more pumped than Ashley Horner's brilliantlove, a bold erotic film from England. Maybe it's because I got no resistance when I championed the splendid narratives When We Leave and A Brand New Life and documentaries The Arbor and Budrus, but briliantlove was a harder sell because of the jarring sexual content. brilliantlove was made by the Newcastle-based Pinball Films, comprised of director-producer Horner, screenwriter Sean Conway, and coproducer Karl Liegis, who boast on their web site that their company is the "Producer of extreme outsider cinema." brilliantlove fits that criteria.
It stars risk-taking, movie-neophytes Nancy Trotter Landry and Liam Browne (middle in my photo), as Noon and Manchester, an attractive, obsessively-in-love young couple who live in a one-car garage. Though she dabbles in taxidermy and he is a house painter, they spend most of their waking hours having sex. He purchases an instamatic and begins filming their kinky acts. The pictures fall in the hands of a porno filmmaker, who sets up an exhibit of the photos at a gallery and tries to make Manchester into an art celebrity. When Noon discovers Manchester agreed to the exhibit, she breaks off their relationship. The tormented Manchester tries to win her back.
Art is by nature subversive and Horner's artistic endeavor surely challenges the rules for what filmmakers can include in erotic non-porno films and what audiences can expect to see. I told Conway that I saw someone flee the theater during a Tribeca screening and we agreed that was a good thing. If everyone is comfortable with this film, then it isn't doing its job. Unfortunately some critics, particularly young bloggers without knowledge of the history of sex in the cinema, were so unresponsive to what the filmmakers were trying to accomplish that I felt like going through their reviews and refuting all their negative assumptions. I won't do that here, but I do want to say that even if critics were correct in saying the filmmakers wanted to shock for shock's sake, which I doubt is the case, that's certainly a legitimate way to shake up the complacent, as Madonna well knows. Also: maybe we have no inclination to hang out with Manchester and Noon, who the filmmakers didn't try to make 100% appealing (indeed Manchester is at times a bit repulsive), but we must applaud them for being the two people in the world to achieve true love and show us that obsessive love, with a lot of sex, can be a great thing. And: rather than there being neither rhyme nor reason for what we see on the screen, there were many intelligent choices made by people (cast and crew) who deeply believed in the movie's romantic/sexual themes. This is exactly the film that Horner, Conway, Liegis, Landry, and Browne wanted to make, partly because no one had dared tackle such a film before. There are a number of times I thought "that's something new" when watching this movie, and I think you'll have the same positive reaction. Kudos to Tribeca Film Festival for showing it.
Below is an an informal Q&A between the audience at the screening I attended and Horner, Conway, Browne, and Landry (a model, dancer, classical singer, cabaret performer, and former Ring Master with the Giffords Circus). That is followed by an enjoyable interview I did with the enthusiastic director and his two amiable stars.
Audience Q&AQ: Where did you get the idea for the story?
Ashley Horner: I met Sean about four years ago. He came to my office and had the idea for a short film called Erotology, about two characters who live in a garage, and it was comprised of vignettes, a series of images. It was kind of a study of sexual lovemaking. I thought it was really fascinating. I was finishing my first film and said, "Sure." We were from similar places and had similar ideas about making a really interesting British erotic piece of cinema, because it's not a genre we do very well in Britain. We're kind of sexier than that sometimes. And that's kind of where it began. We'd been trying to make films for about ten years and we got to a point where we decided to make a certain type of film that nobody else was making. It may have been brave but it was also pragmatic because nobody was allowing us to make the films that we thought we wanted to make. Once you lay out that this is what you are doing, it brings people to you who have the same philosophy and spiritual blah blah blah. Basically you say, "This is what were going to do. Were going to be brave about it and make the fucking cinema nobody else is making"--and that brought people together. Thats how it happened.
Q: Where was it filmed?
AH: In northeast England, meant to look like a generic northern England, and we shot it in twenty-six days, with a crew from around the world.
Q: Has it been shown in the U.K. yet?
AH: We sent a real rough cut to Tribeca and they were really interested. They seemed committed to filmmakers who were trying new stuff. We finished the film seven days ago and delivered it the day before it was to be screened here. We beat the volcano by about five hours. It hasn't been shown anywhere, there are no deals in place. You are among the five hundred people who have seen this film and I love you for coming to see it.
Danny Peary: Because of all the graphic sexual imagery, are the actors scared about screenings of the movie?
Liam Browne: Not really. More people masturbate than take drugs. [Laughter]
Nancy Trotter Landry: I was scared. I think it is a bit scary anticipating viewer reactions. This is only the second time I've seen it.
Q: Liam, what is the most important message of the film?
LB: Love. It's about two people who love each other without all the bullshit of jobs, friends, and other interests, and are just completely entwined with each other.
Q: Is the film also a satire on the commercial art world? Was that added to the script later on just to bring a crisis to the characters?
Sean Conway: It was in there a little bit at the beginning. One of the original titles of the film was Fuck Art. But it was never intended to be an attack on the art world. That was never what the film was about. It is just part of the trajectory of what happens to the two of them.
Q: One of the elements I really like in the film is the music. How did you use it?
AH: I use the music in the film to place you somewhere emotionally. It's music that works for me as well. Music is really difficult in film. You may have something in mind that works but you can't afford to use it. You may have something else that really doesn't do it, but you try to make it work emotionally. There was a point that I didn't want to use any music in the film at all, apart from the music that the two characters would have found in their lives, like on CDs they got on the street or was left to them. That would have been beautiful and it would have worked but it was too expensive to do. So the music in the film is a combination of my record collection and the work of a fantastic music supervisor. Connie Farr, who worked really hard and provided me with about seven hundred tracks to go through to hit the note I was looking for. I used to be a musician and now I'm shocked that I'm a filmmaker. Music is really important to me. I love all the bands who said yes to doing this film.
Q: What's next for you guys?
AH: The next big thing will be Sean's directorial debut. He'll write it also, and I'll produce it and hopefully you'll come back and see it!

My Q&A with (L-R) Landry, Browne, and Horner
,

Danny Peary: After the screening, you said really wanted to go all the way sexually with this film.
Ashley Horner: Did I say that? [Actually, he did not say that exactly, but I thought it was inferred.]
DP: Did you ever want to hold back at all?
AH: I think I held back a lot. I don't think the film is all that explicit. It has some beautifully-choreographed sequences of lovemaking but I don't think we went that far. For me the love-making scenes are about two characters connecting and the way they express their physical and emotional love for one another. I wanted to be emotionally extreme rather than sexually explicit to the extreme.
DP: But whats wrong with being sexually explicit to the extreme?
AH: Theres nothing wrong with it but I'm trying to make art cinema.
Nancy Trotter Landry: You're trying not to separate the two themes--the lovemaking and the emotional; you're trying to move them together.
AH: Exactly. I could have made a porn film with a cum shot every ten minutes, which is the very traditional construct.
Liam Browne: You could have made it more explicit because of the way it is on the page.
AH: Yeah, the screenplay is actually much more explicit than the film that we made.
DP: Does that mean more sex?
AH: More graphic and more gynecological, with language that is less poetic.
DP: A lot of people who make porn films, particularly women directors, have all that deamy "lovemaking-is-beautiful" stuff and you fall asleep watching it. Your film, the way I see it, is really graphic and raw and stays away from that beautiful stuff-- but ironically, even paradoxically, the result is kind of beautiful.
AH: Is that a good thing?
DP: Yeah. In fact, in the early seventies when people started making XXX films like Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones, which are about obsessive sex, many of us who were really into movies and against censorship were excited by this revolution. We predicted the injection of explicit sex into mainstream cinema, whereby barriers would be broken down and characters would have a new, sexual way to express themselves. Your film is exactly the type of film we were hoping for, which never happened.
AH: My goodness, that's a fantastic compliment.
DP: What characters don't do in movies, other than in a rare film like The Last Tango in Paris, which I assume youve seen...
AH: It's one of the first movies that made me want to be a director...
DP: ...is communicate through sex. For some reason, filmmakers will have "sex" scenes just to show characters in bed making love but they dont think of sex as a way for their characters to communicate. In this film, Manchester and Noon communicate through sex. Is that how you see it?

NLT: This relationship is full of vigor and they have excitement to be together, and, yeah, sex is the language that they are speaking.
LB: They express their love through sex. They express it more and more, which is why they experiment more and more. They're being artists in how they do it.
DP: If people described these two lovers who live in a garage as hedonists, would you agree?
LB: I dont think a hedonist would be committed to one person, as they are to each other.
AH: A hedonist could be committed to one person but he'd have sex with other people and do things away from the other. Whatever Manchester and Noon are doing sexually is always about one another, even when they're just fantasizing.
NLT: They aren't doing much without the other. They aren't going to jobs, they have a lot of free time that they spend with each other. They're just tinkering along.
AH: Manchester has a job cleaning windows, but there are a lot of things we shot that didn't make it into the movie.
DP: Did you cut a lot?
AH: Sean's screenplay is wonderfully structured and poetic but it's free-wheeling, so I could have shot enough for two films. In the cinematic tradition, like Hitchcock, I wanted to make the film for an audience so I trimmed it to about 95 minutes rather than having a sprawling, indulgent 120-minute film.
DP: Was being indulgent the big mistake you could have made with this movie?
AH: Absolutely.
DP: Was there an audition process or a lot of discussion about whether the actors could do this?
AH: I held open casting because nobody would touch the film, meaning no casting director would come on board to help me find the actors that might play the parts. But I also wanted fresh faces. A lot of actors who are making their livings in the UK on television couldn't consider taking this film because it would destroy their careers. I found five or six strong actors but needed the chemistry to work. I never did this before, but I did a call back and tried four actors, before casting Liam and Nancy.
DP: How much did you guys know about the film before you went to the first audition?
NLT: We'd seen the script.
LB: The story captured me and as I said, the sex on the page was even more shocking then what is in the film now. But the story just got me and through the last page there were beautiful moments in the script. But I didn't know anything about Ashley or Sean Conway or Pinball Films. So I did some research, just to protect myself and be sure nobody was going to take advantage of me in some way. The Pinball Films web site had artistic elements and I read about Sean and it was clear he was a fucking genius. So I made the decision to do it. My agent was asking me, "Are you sure you want to do this? You dont have to." When I was offered the part, he was still asking me, "Do you want to do it?" And I'm never asked that with anything else. And I said, "Of course, I want to do it."
NLT: I'd question doing any script but more so with this one. I was deliberating quite a lot. I hadn't made a film before. I was intrigued when I first saw the announcement for it and invite for auditions. It was edgy and trying to push boundaries and I liked the sound of that. And I was interested in the character, Noon.
AH: Nancy, you were casting yourself against type, werent you!
DP: When you auditioned, what scene did you do?
LB: It was the scene where Manchester gets himself off, when he hadn't had sex for a long time and they try doing it doggie style.
AH: There was no holding back! But what was the initial audition scene for you, Nancy?
NLT: Sitting next to each other in the car.
DP: After the screening you said that the film was scary to you, and I'd think that is what made it exciting as well. Or was it just, "Oh, I got a job!"?
NLT: The prospect of doing it was exciting because I liked the idea it was breaking boundaries.
DP: But did you realize that you would play a sexual female who was breaking new ground for females in the cinema?
NLT: I hadn't thought of that, but that's exciting to hear.
DP: And Manchester does things on screen that will shock people.
LB: I was scared as well, I was nervous about the sex.
AH: We all were!
LB: But I like scary things. I don't like when people just do the same thing all the time.
DP: Well, this is a one-time thing. I can't imagine you doing anything like this again.
AH (laughing): I just booked them for brilliantlove 2. It's a franchise now!

DP: In the movie, Manchester and Noon have an obsessive love. In movies, particularly French classic films, when characters love all the way typically the love burns out and if they survive they can look back and recall the other person as the love of their life. Is that what will happen to these characters or will they go on and on and on and have grandkids?
NLT: I think that has to do with the slight allegorical element of the story. There is a sense that they will go on forever, that it was hot like that and it would go on to infinity in that way.
AH: There was actually a scene that we shot in which Manchester meets his older self. You still actually see Old Manchester very briefly in the film. The guy who opens the shed is Manchester at sixty-years-old. I thought we didn't need more to explain that this is one of the greatest loves ever.
DP: Which is what you wanted.
AH: Absolutely.
DP: Nancy, in Noon's poetic narration she says a line about how her soul comes out of hiding with Manchester in her life. That's an amazingly romantic thing to say about anybody.
NLT: I understood what she means. As an actor I could imagine and bring out that feeling of freedom and at the same time sacrifice and commitment.
AH: Sean Conway wrote that line. He's brilliant.
DP: When Manchester masturbates he's always thinking of Noon. But Noon can masturbate just thinking about sex. That's the ideal girlfriend who is sexual all the time. [Laughter] But I found that she's not thinking about him a bit problematic because I think they should love each other in exactly the same way, loving each other equally. What do you think?
NLT: To be honest I don't completely grasp the scene where she's masturbating while watching the porno film. But I got from Ash that without a man she is just giving herself reassurance through physical gratification.
AH: I think that scene is really important because it shows that even without Manchester she's still sexual. We felt that every time Manchester masturbates Noon is in his head but when Noon masturbates it's all sorts of other things. I think in that scene she's trying to get Manchester out of her head. There was a scene we shot that we didn't use when she says, "I tried thinking about other men but kept coming back to Manchester." Thats what that scene is about. That's actually the physical embodiment of what she talks about.
DP: As much as Manchester and Noon already love each other and have obsessive love for each other early in the movie, at that time I dont think they know what they have. I think they do near the end of the movie.
AH: Exactly. After being through hell, they know what they've got.
DP: Noon must realize she doesn't ever want anyone but Manchester, because there is something that pulls her to the garage when it's on fire and he is in danger.
AH: There is a sixth sense, some fantastic connection between these two that allows her to come back there at that moment.
DP: At the screening, someone asked if there was some satire in your film regarding the commercialization of their amateurish sex photos, when they end up as a museum exhibit.
AH: It's not a full-on satire, but the art world is represented in a one-dimensional way.
DP: I guess what Im wondering is: Can you take what they have and make it commercial? It's all about purity, which is why Noon gets mad at Manchester for agreeing to exhibit them. He perverts something that was beautiful and personal.
AH: She didnt know what he was doing until she arrived at the gallery.
LB: That's why there is a scene in the film where Manchester comes by with the camera he bought on the street and she tries to have sex with him and he is annoyed for the first time. He's trying to tell her what he's doing with the camera but she's not giving him the opportunity to explain what's going on. I think it's a difficult thing for him to tell her because of the way his head works, just coming and going and never getting around to doing it.
AH: He can never spit it out.
DP: What they are doing when there is no camera there, and even when Manchester has his little camera and is photographing their sex--isn't there some performance art going on, even if only for each other? Liam referred to their being artists in their lovemaking. Maybe Manchester realizes that.
NLT: Right, when she's riding on the bicycle and stuff like that and he's taking pictures.

AH: Would this story exist if Manchester hadn't left the photographs in the pub? They could have just gone on forever.
DP: Do they need anybody else?
NLT: I don't think they think they do. In reality, I don't know if that's the case.
DP: I like the concept of mad love, but in other movies the couple usually has to go out and rob banks or shoot up things and commit crimes. Or in In the Realm of Senses, the female finally needs to mutilate and murder her lover as part of their natural progression sexually.
AH: You should try to see a Japanese film called Jitsuroku Abe Sada that was directed by Noboru Tanaka. Its English title is A Woman Called Abe Sada. It was made in 1975 and was top ten box office in Japan, and I found it on VHS on the old Pagan Films label in the UK. The film was inspired by the same real life story as Ai No Corrida, which I saw very early in my cinematic education but was made about fifteen years earlier. I think it really holds up today. I finally saw Ai No Corrida in the the early 1990's and it stayed with me when we were developing brilliantlove. At one point we discussed whether our film should end tragically, but I couldn't punish Manchester and Noon for enjoying the sexual side of love. That would be miles away from what I am trying to say with the film.
DP: Finally, Ashley, do you want to shake up things with this movie and/or to lead other people to make films like this?
AH: I don't think anybody should be making films that ape someone else's. I do think everyone should be making more extreme, brave, question-asking, philosophical, beautiful films. My intention as a producer-director is to make many more powerful pieces of cinema. That's my raison d'etre.

dannypeary@aol.com

"Stuck" with a Director and Two Stars

Find Stuck Between Stations on Video

"Stuck" with a Director and Two Stars

(from brinkzine.com 5/20/11)

In the booklet of films given to all critics at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival, Brady Kiernan's debut feature Stuck Between Stations was described by a programmer as "a portrait of restless youth torn between promise and malaise, and an authentic and affecting snapshot of a generational zeitgeist." Even if I could make sense of those words, I'm not sure I'd agree with them--and it's unlikely Id go to that film. To me, Stuck Between Stations is a charming, witty romance in the Before Sunrise tradition, only instead of two young good-looking strangers falling in love while talking their way around Vienna, our twosome spends an adventurous night wandering around Minneapolis. Actually, they're not total strangers. Casper (cowriter Sam Rosen) is a soldier who comes home on bereavement leave and meets up with his high school crush, Rebecca (indie favorite Zoe Lister-Jones, of the upcoming sitcom Whitney). Because they ran in different circles then, they never pursued a romance, but on this night before he returns to the service, they find themselves attracted to one another. He's closed off from people and has lost his father--his only semifriend in town is the wild and weird Paddy (Josh Hartnett)--and she's just out of an affair with her married professor (Michael Imperioli)--and somehow they find each other. Like me, I think you'll really like the two leads, root for the two characters, and be touched by the sweet and perfect ending. Here's my interview with Kiernan (in the middle in the picture), Rosen, and Lister-Jones (the star, cowriter and producer of Breaking Upwards). It was fun being stuck with them for twenty minutes.
Danny Peary: Brady, did you know Zoe and Sam before you made this film?
Brady Kiernan: I knew Sam because he was one of the stars of Four Boxes and I was the line producer. I had met Zoe a couple of times. I was very familiar with her work.
DP: Zoe's from Brooklyn and you two are from Minneapolis?
Sam Rosen: Yeah, me and Brady, and Josh Hartnett. I love it, man.
DP: Talk about the film's tagline--"Sometimes the best night of your life happens at the worst possible time." Isn't that the right time for big things to happen?
BK: I think the tagline is from Casper's perspective because he has to go back to the service. He would be with this girl, spending maybe the rest of his life with her but there is no chance to have that because he has to go back.
DP: So if somebody set up Rebecca on a blind date, would it be with Casper?
BK: No way.
Zoe Lister-Jones: Eh, no. That's a nice thing about the movie--that the chemistry between Rebecca and Casper is sort of unexpected. On paper these two people are very, very different.

DP: Sam, do you agree? Guys see it a little different than girls about who is meant for them.
San Rosen: I dont think Casper has any friends right now to set him up. But, no. I think that Casper is hanging out in a little bit of a different scene than the Rebeccas of the world. I think if somebody was going to set up Casper on a blind date, it probably would be with a wild party chick or hooker.
DP: Even at the very end?
SR: I think at the end, Casper's whole world has probably been effected by his night with Becky.
BK: I think Casper would set up Casper with Becky. But I dont think anyone that Casper knows would set them up.
SR: Right, and I think that's the cool thing about having the movie so contained to the two of them. They almost walk through the halls of high school at the beginning, and you see a little bit of others' reaction to them as a couple. You get them when they get to be in their own little world. It stops being about who each of them is.
DP: Did they miss an opportunity when they knew each other in high school? Were they even more mismatched then?
ZLJ: Well, clearly there was a missed opportunity back then, but probably their connection wouldn't have been as deep if they had been able to explore it in high school. I think it took their growing up--at least for Rebecca--to understand that this is a person that she could really invest in.
BK: And I think for Casper, definitely, that's one of the driving forces of the night. He feels that the opportunity was missed in high school, and he's just lucky to have Rebecca become more interesting than the version of her that he has had all these years.
DP: But he's always liked her, obviously. Did he say, if she really got to know me, she would like me, too?
SR: Oh, I think the he has always felt confident that if she got to know him she would like him.
DP: Why didn't she call him in high school when she had his number?
ZLJ: This is more character work than I think we did making the movie! I think it was just that high school is a really divided environment and he wasn't in her circle and she probably had other things going on.
DP: I was actually surprised she did remember him as much as she did. A validation of Casper?
SR: After he tells her that story about putting the note in her notebook, I think she's telling the truth when she says she doesn't remember it. There are missed opportunities. But thankfully for our audience, or for the sake of these characters, they've come together at this moment. I don't think they would have worked in high school. I think the only way they can work is by going through the things that they go through that night. The things they share are the crises and the damages that they've both sustained. They are able to share in that and understand each other better because of it.
DP: They're kind of perfect people for each other that night
BK: I dont know what perfect means, but I think Casper hasnt had anybody either validate or challenge him. Whether or not he thinks or is aware of that being what he needs, that is what he needs, and that's what the night is for him. Even if he doesn't grasp this as it happens because he's in it for his own reasons, it is what happens.
DP: Well, obviously Casper is helped by the presence of Becky. Is Becky helped by the presence of Casper?
ZLJ: Oh, totally. I don't think either of them are people who know how to ask for help, and so it's serendipitous that they fall into each other's lives at this moment when they desperately need it. He's an unexpected companion and source of assistance, both emotional and practical, for the night.
DP: The two stories that they tell each other--do you think they've ever told anybody else?
BK: I dont know if they've never told anyone else, but it's definitely something private. I think Casper hasn't told his war story to anyone else, but Rebecca has dealt with her story more. There's an intimacy that they're developing as they reveal more to each other.
DP: They're sharing the most private things in their lives.
ZLJ: Yeah, absolutely.

SPOILER ALERT
DP: So it leads of course to her line, "When you get back, call me, " which I think is a super-romantic line.
SR: I can't think who wrote that, Nat Bennett or I, but I love when just some real simple-ass sentence catches it, you know?
DP: Well, yeah, what better line can Becky say to Casper?
SR: I cant think of one!
ZLJ (laughing): "Let's have sex, now!" might be a better line.
DP: Well, it's basically, We're going to have sex when you get back.
BK: I think what you're describing distills very well why I think it is a hopeful ending. When she's leaving, you're feeling like it is going to happen, they are going to get together when he returns.
END SPOILER ALERT
DP: Casper is very isolated, Becky mingles with people. But does anybody know either character for real?
SR: Nobody knows Casper.
DP: Even his platoon mates wouldnt know him?
SR: I dont think so. That's back-story stuff and whatever, that's not in the film, but I just don't see him as a guy who gets close to anyone. I don't see him telling some guys what's going on in high school, he's not talking to them about what went on back here or anything like that. I see him as a guy who's got walls up everywhere, whether they're walls he puts up by making jokes or by whatever he's doing. He keeps himself by himself.
ZLJ: I think Becky's more open but I assume that she's lost. I think that she shared a lot of herself with her professor boyfriend, and that she's capable of having pretty intimate relationships, but the fact that before she goes off with Casper she's hanging out with guys who are sort of dogs reveals that she's kind of coasting on a social level. She is not looking for people to be intimate with, she's just looking for an escape most of the time.
DP: Does she sense that there's something special about Casper that makes her get out of the car and go off with him?
ZLJ: Yeah, totally. I think that the first time they speak, there's instant chemistry and intrigue, and that's what draws her to spend the rest of the night with him.
DP: Would you agree with that, is that the pivotal moment for them?
SR: I think so. Men have what I like to think are interesting ideas of what to say to girls, and what would be a cool thing to say to get a girl interested.
DP: Well, Casper's line to her is "Who said I want to kiss you?" which is a key to making her interested.
SR: It's that, and the Dances With Wolves joke that seals the deal. Girls love that stuff!
DP: Zoe, do you like acting and talking in scenes where you walk down the street? You do that in Breaking Upwards, too, and you're good at it.

ZLJ: Yeah. I dont seek it out but it is a skill, because you have to walk slowly while making it seem natural. It's always nice to shoot outside, and I think it's nice for an actor to be given movement in a scene like that, because it allows the performance to be a little less staged and stale.
DP: In Breaking Upwards, your character's mother calls her needy and she gets upset by that. What about Becky, is she needy?
ZLJ: No, I think they're very different characters. I think Becky shares less of herself with people than my character in Breaking Upwards does. And I think she's a little less uptight. She doesnt wear her heart on her sleeve in the same way.
BK: That's why she and Casper connect so quickly. They see a lot of the same sort of thing in each other. Rebecca is more open, and she has more of a social life, yet she is still pretty closed off. She sees Casper in a state that she was in a year or two ago. She sees a lot of herself in him.
DP: Was there something to the names? Her last name is Fine, which kind of fits her image.
SR: I never thought about that Fine thing once when we wrote the script!
ZLJ: That's good!
SR: I really dont know about the Casper name, that was definitely one of Nat's ideas.
DP: There are people named that, though very few.
SR: I liked the way that it sounds right coming off your tongue. If you're going to introduce yourself to somebody in the movie, you'd better be able to sound convincing saying that name. His parents named him and the only thing that we know about Casper's parentage is that his father was kind of a hippie-ish photographer. There may be some ghost hints in there or something. I'm not sure. I just saw the name and I liked it.
DP: Why is it important that Casper's a Republican?
SR: I dont think he is Republican. He doesnt deny it, he doesnt feel the need. He just sees it as catching shit from his friend Paddy who thinks he's a Republican, and he's not going to explain shit to his friend. That's just how Casper is. He'll stick up for himself, but he doesn't feel the need to get into it with his friend. He doesn't feel the need to define himself to Becky.
BK: Until the end, he doesn't ever explain anything about himself to anyone, except for Becky.
He also doesn't care if somebody calls him Republican--call me Republican! What's that got to do with it?
DP: Well, the line about in his neighborhood, people spit on his father for having a bumper sticker supporting the troops. Whats up with that? I dont think liberals in Minnesota are against supporting the troops nowadays.

BK: Maybe it isn't as clear as it could be, but I just thought it was a little hint about the communities I grew up around. Neighborhoods in South Minneapolis are very liberal neighborhoods. Theyre very left-leaning culturally. If I saw a car like that in my dad's neighborhood right now--to the extent it was plastered with those stickers--it would seem odd.
ZLJ: I dont think they'd be spitting on it because they dont support the troops but because many people who have Support the Troops stickers represent right wing politics.
DP: Zoe, had you been to Minneapolis before?.
ZLJ: I had been there once before for a film festival, and I loved it. And I loved it even more this time.
DP: Sam, your scene in Breaking Upwards, when you're listing STDs at a party at an art museum, was that improvised?
ZLJ: Yep, that was improvised.
SR: I was under the impression that that entire movie was going to be improvised, but then I later found out that on all the other days they were using a script.
ZLJ: Sam came in and we had been lazy with his character, but we knew that we could trust that he'd always have something funny to say.
DP: So you were a co-writer on that film but not on this film; so how did you work differently?
ZLJ: I'm definitely a control-freak. Not about the writing, because I also co-produced Breaking Upwards. As a producer, it was hard for me not to get really into things, like whether the continuity was working, and whatever. But it was a nice relief not wearing all those hats.
BK: In our rehearsal practice, she challenged us to make Rebecca more believable and we did some rewrites based on Zoe's feedback. That was a really important part of the process. It's good for a bunch of dudes to get a female perspective!