Playing With Gators and Dying With Dogs: Benjamin Tan and Catherine Hardwicke in Conversation

intro by Chimera Mohammadi
stills from Dog (2024)

In Benjamin Tan’s 2024 short film, Dog, teenage angst sizzles from the screen in a haze of rave-flavored smoke almost thick enough to make you cough. Tan speaks with filmmaker Catherine Hardwicke–who described and shaped generations of adolescent fantasies and fears with movies like Thirteen (2003), Lords of Dogtown (2005), and Twilight (2008)–to identify the strains of terror, rebellion, and self-destruction that combine to infuse the atmospheres of their movies with punch-drunk drama. Dog exists only in tight, black and white images of raves, bedrooms, and cars, which are so myopic that each small scene expands into a massive world, capturing a hedonistic sense of frightening abandon by allowing each moment to become all-consuming. Hardwicke also harnesses deprivation to produce abundance, her coming-of-age stories defined by a similar smallness as limited backdrops make up the vastness of young adult worlds. The limitations of their settings go from comfortingly controlled to claustrophobically constrictive as bacchanalian exploration leads down dark, dead-end roads. Tan and Hardwicke’s films are astonishing for their abilities to capture the unbound possibility of youth culture and keep the camera trained when the carcass of promise begins to rot and fester in its fishnets and kandi bracelets. In conversation, the creators turn their gazes on their own explosive entrances to adulthood, sifting through memories of predators, secrecy, and ecstasy, cataloging the bruises and scars they passed down to their protagonists.

BEN TAN: I watched Thirteen for the first time when I was in middle school. It’s such an honest depiction of teenagers, and it was the first time I watched a film where the characters mirrored my own experiences.  

CATHERINE HARDWICKE: Yeah, that was definitely the idea: to make it feel like you were just living like Nikki Reed was living at the time. I would go over to her house and film, with my little video camera, a war between her and her mom. We hadn't really seen what was really going on with teenage girls and all the stress and struggle and peer pressure and all that crazy shit. I went and volunteered at Nikki’s middle school and I saw wild behavior. I saw the teacher trying to wrangle out-of-control students with cell phones running around and guys calling girls pretty outrageous things right there out loud in class. And I thought, this is a lot to deal with. Do people really understand what's going on in a nice school?  

TAN: Did you have a rebellious childhood?  

HARDWICKE: Everybody kind of has to, a little bit. I grew up in South Texas and it was a very different environment. We would be on the Rio Grande River doing crazy stuff like rope slings.  There would be snakes there. There would be 12ft alligator guards. It was a very rowdy childhood. Like, “We're gonna swim across the river. We're gonna run around in Mexico, illegal entry.”  

TAN: So you were like an adrenaline junkie.  

HARDWICKE: Exactly. If you had bruises on you, you know you had fun. If you didn't, you were a wimp. I guess it’s its own form of rebellion. Rebellion against ordinary life. Boredom.  

TAN: I grew up skateboarding and Jackass was a big influence on my brothers and I. We’d blow shit up on our street or skate off roofs. Just be completely crazy kids. I feel like my destructive childhood formed my creative adulthood.  

HARDWICKE: I kind of feel lucky that I had crazy adventures as a kid. When you make something very specific, which you did in Dog, it's more relatable to people. I was amazed how you had a very complex relationship with the mother and the sister established almost in 30 seconds. And you're curious and it's a mystery. What is going on? We're drawn into it right away. I think it was so fascinating that you created this kind of mystery at the beginning about the sister and then we start to reveal it. Some people might not even realize that she's blind until the touching game.  

TAN: Yeah, I wanted the opening to set things up quickly but be subtle enough, leaving some mystery for the audience to discover the characters.  

HARDWICKE: Well, it helps. You keep leaning in. There's something a little off. You're curious. I want to know more. Keeps you in with the film. I like that. Did you feel like you based these on real people that you knew?  

TAN: I went to raves at a really young age, like 11. I fell in love with the music right away. At a rave, you can have a profound spiritual experience but there's an element of danger just around the corner. It’s not based on anyone in particular, but I wanted to express the anxiety I felt as a teenager. I always felt like something could go wrong at any moment, or worse, my parents would discover my secrets.  

HARDWICKE: It's not the most safe environment.  

TAN: But the older sister is more experienced.  

HARDWICKE: She knows not to drink the voodoo juice. Even if you try to be the best big sister you can be, something else could happen.  

TAN: And when you’re a teenager and something bad happens to you, you don't want to share it with anyone. We default to keeping secrets because we want to protect the people that we love from our own pain. We don’t want to inflict it on anyone else.  

HARDWICKE: Wow. Yeah, that's intense.  

TAN: I think I see a lot of similarities with Thirteen. Tracy pushes away her mother to hide her pain.  

HARDWICKE: She's secretly cutting and doesn’t tell her mother, but that takes great pains to hide it. 

TAN: In my middle school, raver girls would wear kandi bracelets they’d make and they’d say things like “love” and “peace” but underneath they were hiding the scars on their wrists.  

HARDWICKE: There's a lot of irony built into that. Talk to me about the music and how you wove the music and when you chose to use it.  

TAN: Austin Feinstein made the score. I showed him some scenes and he made two demo songs that I placed in the areas where I thought needed music. It worked right away. He tried to convince me to use no score because he thought that the film was stronger without music, but his music really sets the mood.  

HARDWICKE: But you were always going to have it in the rave.  

TAN: That's true. The rave music was a song from a Scottish techno DJ called Franck. I wanted to have authentic techno, so I reached out to him. and he let us use his song.  

HARDWICKE: Oh, that's so cool.  

TAN: When you were shooting Thirteen, did you rearrange the dialogue and edit things on the day? How much did you execute that script by the book?  

HARDWICKE: What we did is, we wrote it standing up. I had been observing, having her friends over at my house all the time for surf and skate camps and slumber parties and going to her house and going to the schools and all that. So I was kind of like taking all this in, absorbing the scenes that I thought were interesting. I'd say, “Let's improv out a scene.  Let’s do a scene where you came home from school and your mom says this. I’ll play your mom, you play yourself.” And then as soon as we finished acting, I would write it up the best we could and put it into the screenplay. But during the rehearsal process, I’d schedule the scenes that I was the most worried about. And I said, let's work on the big confrontational scene. We would try it out. If people felt like their words were clunky or not natural, say it in your own words, inner monologue, what are you really feeling? Say what's in the script now that we've talked through it all and we felt it. Sometimes those inner monologues, those improvs would give a great line that needs to be in. Sometimes it's just an exercise to connect you to the material. Sometimes there's something great that happens. 

TAN: When we shot Dog, Alexis Felix, who plays Summer, was giving her mom a quick rundown of Meisner technique just hours before we shot her scenes. They were changing the script so their argument was in their own words, making it more natural. It definitely sounded better. Her mom had never acted before but I casted her because that chemistry and history is already there and I've witnessed them have a heated debate more than one time.  

HARDWICKE: Which is kind of great because you could feel it. There's this built in tension. There's little trigger points that everybody has. When you made Dog, did you rehearse?  

TAN: We only rehearsed the long scene where Tommy is flirting with Lex, and Summer feels the need to intervene. Tommy is on molly, so he’s not thinking rationally. Also, we don’t fully know Tommy and Summer’s past. One thing we did in the rehearsal process was create a backstory between Summer and Tommy and the relationship that they had. That backstory that we created really guided the nuances of that scene.  

HARDWICKE: I thought it was really effective. Certainly in Thirteen, there's the backstory and all the different things, her mother’s struggle with addiction and what her relationship with the mother's ex-boyfriend was. Even in Twilight, we rehearsed scenes of Bella with her father and her mother when her parents told her, we're getting divorced. We played improv scenes where Bella hung out with her dad at Disneyland when she was 13 years old, and super awkward. None of that is in the movie, of course, or even in the books. Just the fact that the actors had that sense memory. That informs the scene.  

TAN: Wow, yeah, you can definitely feel it. I love your use of color. How Thirteen takes on a blue melancholic tone as the relationships become more conflicted. And how the ending scene with the sunrise resets everything and allows the color back into their life. Was that something that you thought of early on or did you kind of discover that in post?  

HARDWICKE: I was thinking a lot of this movie, 60% or 70%, is going to be in a house and a lot of it's going to be in one bedroom. I thought, how is that going to be interesting? How does the light change? How could the movie stay alive? It's kind of an emotional rollercoaster with the color. It’s normal and bland lighting at the beginning. Then, when Evie comes into her life, it's glowing. We start cranking up the chroma a bit when she starts doing drugs and experimenting. So there's a bit more exaggeration to the colors. When they break up, the color starts draining out. The color goes away back to the blue grays and finally the end when the sun comes up. You made an absolutely beautiful movie in black and white. Why did you choose black and white?  

TAN: I wanted to remove a sense from the audience as a reminder that Lex, the blind character, is missing a sense too. Also, there is the notion that dogs see in black and white. Besides setting a mood quickly, these examples were compelling reasons that I felt motivated the aesthetic. Also, I think that showing it in black and white kind of enhances the imagination of what could be in the setting. When you take the color away, the scale of the rave looks so much bigger.  

HARDWICKE: I think so too. I used to be a production designer, and when I didn't have enough money to control or create the world the way I wanted to, I would often be asking,  “Could we make this in black and white?” I think it's very smart. You created a beautiful, unified look. I thought it worked emotionally. And I thought it was exciting to be in a rave without color because now you have to think about other parts of a rave. You're thinking more about the music, the rhythm, the other elements. 

Pee-wee & Nadia's Playhouse

Autre Magazine, Vol. 2 Iss. 15 F/W 2022: Losing My Religion

photographs by Nadia Lee Cohen
(director of photography Andrew Goeser)
photo assistance by Gustavo Soriano
styling by Chloe & Chenelle
tailoring by Oxana Sumenko
makeup by Ve Neill (for Paul Reubens)
& Lilly Keys @ A-Frame Agency (for Nadia Lee Cohen)
hair by Sami Knight @ A-Frame Agency
special thanks to Allison Berry, David Owen, Dream Factory Studios, Edge EQ Rentals, and Uncle Paulie’s Deli

Paul Reubens is one of the most brilliant comedic talents of our era. His character, Pee-wee Herman, a maniacal man child with a famous red bowtie, hypernasality, and a predilection for mischief, is a Saturday morning cartoon come to life. Invented on the stage of The Groundlings, Pee-wee Herman is equally iconic and archetypal as Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp. Socially defective with the decency to wear a suit, both characters are rife with hilarious contradictions, and both characters are perfect representations of their respective zeitgeists. Whereas the Tramp was a silent and prophetic emblem of the forthcoming economic devastation of two global wars, Pee-wee may as well have been a louder-than-bombs manifestation of the late-capitalistic dreamscape of the 1980s. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (Tim Burton’s directorial debut) and later Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which aired on CBS and saw an average of ten million viewers per episode, was a fantasy of talking furniture in a supersaturated world that harkened back to 1950s diners and primetime dance competitions, a satirization of Post-War Americana as a frenzied pastiche. This pastiche was a siren call for rising artist and photographer Nadia Lee Cohen, who also trades in the currency of alter egos and the milieu of consumerist reverie through the lens of humor. Raised in the English countryside, a self-professed wild child, the technicolor stagecraft of Hollywood had an irresistible allure. Her solo exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, which was an unabashed sensation, included two large bodies of work from two sold out monographs published by IDEA Books. Women includes over 100 portraits of a diverse cast of female characters fictionalized by Cohen, at work and at play, all under the banner of Los Angeles’ disparate socio-economic milieu. Reminiscent of movie stills, the images are freeze frames in moments of action, repose, or seductive enchantment. In her most recent series,  HELLO, My Name Is, Nadia utilizes extensive prosthetics and makeup to embody a vast array of characters inspired by found corporate name tags—each character has an invented story, thoughts, dreams, and desires. It is a Hitchcockian character study of self-portraiture. Jean Baudrillard talked about this escape from the self in an age of simulation and hyperreality: "Never to be oneself, but never to be alienated: to enter from the outside into the form of the other." Both Paul Reubens and Nadia Lee Cohen take immense pleasure in this metamorphosis. Currently in production is a two-part HBO documentary on the life of Paul Reubens, directed by Matt Wolf (Spaceship Earth) and produced by the Safdie Brothers. In a time of shapeshifting realities and alternative facts, a time when we don’t even recognize the reflection in our mirrors, what can two masters of disguise teach us about who we really are?  

PAUL REUBENS Should we talk a little bit about how we met?  

NADIA LEE COHEN I knew you way before you knew anything about me. I used to do your Tequila dance for relatives when they came over. 

PAUL REUBENS I remember seeing you on Instagram. The more I saw, the more I was like, I have to know who this person is. And then, didn't I write you a note on Instagram?  

NADIA LEE COHEN Yes, you did. You shared something of mine and I thought it was a mistake. Tell me about growing up in Sarasota, [Florida] I Googled it last night. When did your fantasy world begin?  

PAUL REUBENS Well, my fantasy world began way before Sarasota because we moved there when I was in fourth grade. I was already obsessed with show business and wanted to be an actor when I was just a little kid. But I also watched a lot of television. That’s what really made me want to become an actor. I watched a lot of American shows like the Mickey Mouse Club, and there was a marionette named Howdy Doody that I loved so much. And then I Love Lucy. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Somehow, I just recognized, without knowing it, what a clown she was.  

NADIA LEE COHEN People always ask about the connection of where I grew up in relation to why I’m inspired by what I’m inspired by. I really have to rack my brain for answers. Having that question repeated made me realize there’s a chance I've been lying all this time and only recently realized it’s probably just down to the color palette, which is a mass of wet green and muddy brown. That's all I saw for maybe fifteen years, and I think that caused me to become excited by things like signage and food packaging; which eventually led me to America and all things American. 

PAUL REUBENS That makes sense to me too. As an infant—or almost an infant—I remember being obsessed by wallpaper, my blanket, and patterns. For me, it was patterns.  

NADIA LEE COHEN  Patterns or color. I watched cartoons like Tom and Jerry or Ren and Stimpy, things like that. And a British show called Bill and Ben. When I think back to those, I remember the pattern and color rather than the narrative. 

PAUL REUBENS  Sarasota, Florida was the winter headquarters of the Ringling Brothers Circus. So, when you would go to the grocery store, you could tell who all the circus people were. They were just dressed differently. 

NADIA LEE COHEN I'm imagining the fat lady and the bearded lady buying eggs. 

PAUL REUBENS There was an adjacent community where all the sideshow people lived.  

NADIA LEE COHEN Why? Because they were outcasts?  

PAUL REUBENS Yeah. They lived in a different community.  

NADIA LEE COHEN  So, who were you seeing?  

PAUL REUBENS This is a long time ago, and this wouldn't be that uncommon now, but you would see somebody with dyed red hair or fishnet stockings. You would go, oh, wow, there's a circus performer. That seemed like show business. That's the closest I had been to real show business. We would see them all over town. And we lived near some circus people. So, for a while I just thought, maybe this is my calling.  

NADIA LEE COHEN I was a tomboy, didn't brush my hair and was always covered in mud, cuts, and bruises. The farm we grew up in was kind of a building site, my dad was slowly doing it up. I had this little quad bike and I'd just roam around everywhere saving animals till the sun went down. There was this nasty disease the rabbits got in England called myxomatosis. It would make them go blind and mangey. So, I used to go around collecting them which is probably pretty unhygienic. They'd all eventually die, so sad but probably taught me a lot about death. There were also these cages around the fields where pheasants were trapped for the local gentry to shoot on the weekend. I used to free them too. One day the gamekeeper knocked at the door and told my dad “If your daughter keeps this shit up I’ll shoot her.” 

PAUL REUBENS I was waiting for you to bring up your dad. I wanted to talk about dads for one minute, because I feel like our dads have a bit in common and probably had a lot to do with how we turned out. You posted some pictures of your dad and he looked so amazing. He was on a motorcycle and he looked like a rebel. And my father was really like that too. 

NADIA LEE COHEN Tell me about him.  

PAUL REUBENS Well, my father and four other Americans started the Israeli Air Force in 1947. There’s a documentary about it. But I grew up not really having very much context for his stories and feeling like they were all exaggerated. I didn't realize it was him and just four other people. I just thought it was a whole big thing with lots of people. And so my father was like Indiana Jones. And I got this vibe that your dad was like that too.  

NADIA LEE COHEN That’s incredible, I think I knew parts of that but I also didn’t realize it was just him and four other guys. My dad doesn’t like rules and I think I inherited that. My mom was married to somebody in the band Supertramp before I was born, they split and she fled to a kibbutz in Israel, which is apparently what the majority of 18-to-30-year-olds were doing in the 1970s. That’s where she met my dad. He just rode up to her on his motorbike, smoking with a red hoodie on. He was a rebel and always in trouble. He couldn't speak any English, so they couldn't actually converse for years. She brought him back to England and they're still together.  

PAUL REUBENS Every detail of that sounds fantastic. 

NADIA LEE COHEN  And the best thing is it’s recorded. My dad has such amazing documentation of his childhood, teens, and early manhood. He and his friends all chipped in to buy a camera when they were really young. Which was a big deal as they were dirt poor—like stealing-eggs-from-the-neighbors kind of poor. 

PAUL REUBENS  Going back to rules, and I have a feeling that we had this in common—I think one of many things I got from my dad was, do not tell me no about something. If you tell me that something can't be done, that's like a challenge to me. I'm like, oh I will figure that out. Don't you have that? 

NADIA LEE COHEN  Oh, 100%. Definitely. My mom says I have that, and maybe I got it from her. Her dad told her to ‘never call anyone sir’ which I love as a life sentiment. I wanted to ask about your father building a stage for you? 

PAUL REUBENS  I'm so happy you brought that up because I know that your father also built you a stage. When I was a kid, we lived in upstate New York—this was before we moved to Florida, so I must have been like five or six years old. One day my father came in and said that he would build something in the basement for both my sister and I—whatever we wanted. My sister wanted a pirate ship, so he built her a pirate ship. And I wanted a stage, so he built me a stage. I would do the craziest stuff on the stage. I became very popular in our neighborhood with older kids who would use me to get to the stage. They would put on shows and give me a bit part. One of them was a sci-fi play where I got pushed offstage into a vat of acid—that was my whole part. My father and I would go to these novelty stores in New York City and I would get to choose one thing to buy, and I would always buy something for my stage. One time, I bought this fake grass mat, very small.  I would put that on the stage and sit with my legs to the side, like a fawn, and I would turn on the blue light. It was like a tableau, like I was in the woods and I was some kind of animal in repose.  

Nadia wears CELINE
Paul wears TOM FORD

NADIA LEE COHEN  Was there an audience?  

PAUL REUBENS  No, I would do it by myself (laughs). I was pretty young to be like, let me just be as weird as I can be today, but that's kind of what it was. 

NADIA LEE COHEN My stage was above the garage. It was a time when I was really obsessed with the reverse dream sequence in Twin Peaks. You know with the zigzag floor and red curtain? I asked my parents to help me make it, and one day I came home from school and they’d made it. My dad had put up the curtain and built the stage and my mom hand-painted the zigzags. It’s still there, only now my parents have a Polish lodger who lives in the flat above the garage and works out in the Twin Peaks area (laughs). I feel like David Lynch would be very into the visual of a buff little Polish guy lifting weights in that set. 

PAUL REUBENS Another obvious thing that we have in common is that we both deal in alter egos. That's where we overlap. But, I only really have one alter ego. I mean, being an actor in movies, you get to play an alter ego, but it's a scripted thing. You're co-creating something that somebody else wrote and conceived. Whereas you just go from scratch.  

NADIA LEE COHEN  Do you find you're less self-conscious when dressed as somebody else? I find I have this freedom in not caring what I look like because they don't care about what they look like. Character gives me a certain confidence I don't have as Nadia.  

PAUL REUBENS  Absolutely. That’s part of the allure and the glamor of alter egos. You hide behind them or disappear into them. 

NADIA LEE COHEN  I wonder if it has something to do with being insecure in yourself. Did you have a difficult upbringing with any bullying?  

PAUL REUBENS I didn't really. I mean, I was an oddball kid, but it didn't really affect me that much. I remember my first day of school, when we moved to Florida, I showed up in a full beachcomber outfit. I had cutoff pirate pants and a rope belt. My mother took us shopping and we got to pick out whatever we wanted. I have to give it to my parents. They were never like, “Are you kidding? Are you crazy? No, you can't wear that.” She'd be like, “Go ahead.” So I showed up in the craziest outfits and the kids in school were all like, “What the hell are you supposed to be?”  

NADIA LEE COHEN  Were they into it? 

PAUL REUBENS No, they weren't at all. They made fun of me. But instead of saying to myself, “Oh my God, I've made a huge mistake.” I was more like, “What part of this don't you guys get? I'm a Beachcomber. We're in Florida. Are you insane?” And the next day I went to school in the same outfit—just different color pirate pants and shirt. 

NADIA LEE COHEN On my first day of high school I decided to have two Princess Leia buns. My skirt was extremely long whilst everybody else's was very short. And I had these shoes that my mom bought because they came with a free watch. They were big and clunky. So I turned up looking like a real target. And also, at eleven, I was the height I am now—I used to stand with my hip dropped down to make myself shorter. Around a month into school I piled on makeup, tanned my skin terracotta and bleached my hair and eyebrows in order to successfully morph into the ‘Essex Girl’ I noticed was popular. I fully went for it.  

PAUL REUBENS So, was it an early alter ego do you think?  

NADIA LEE COHEN: I guess so. It was quite extreme. It probably lasted the duration of school. As soon as I went to college I dropped it.  

PAUL REUBENS Speaking of college, where did you get the skills that you have now? Did you go to art school? 

NADIA LEE COHEN  I went to London College of Fashion for no reason other than fashion and art interested me. I took a course, which was basically a bit of everything: design, textiles, photography, styling, and whatever else is fashion related. And then, they whittled it down. The teacher would say, “You're shit at that, you’re good at that,” until you’re left with two things. Which for me was styling and photography. And they said “pick one,” so I picked photography. Did you go to school for art? 

PAUL REUBENS I dropped out of school in fourth grade. No, I'm kidding (both laugh). I came out here to attend the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) that was founded and endowed by Walt Disney. He conceptualized it, but died before it was actually built. There was a film school, a theater school, an art school, a writing school, a dance school, a music school—all the visual and performing arts under one roof. It was very avant garde when it started. I had gone to a school that was the opposite of that to start and thought, oh no, I want real crazy, avant garde. And that’s exactly what it was. 

NADIA LEE COHEN  How long were you there? 

PAUL REUBENS  I was there for, I think six, years. I never wound up getting a degree, but the one thing that I did that was the smartest thing, or maybe dumb luck a little bit—because I always felt I was so interested in so many things—I just went: do not question what interests you. Just follow whatever interests you. At some point down the line, it's gonna all get mixed together and the meaning will be revealed in some dramatic way. I was so lucky, because when Pee-wee came along, I was present enough to go, this is it, this is the thing—this is what all of that stuff meant. 

NADIA LEE COHEN  Do you think you'd been building Pee-wee for years, unconsciously? 

PAUL REUBENS  Yes, because he’s a whole bunch of different things that all came together. Once I had become Pee-wee Herman, there was an American show called  The Dating Game, which would have three bachelors, and a woman would pick one date. So, I put on my Pee-wee suit and auditioned to be a contestant. This was the first time I had ever gone out into the world as Pee-wee Herman. Prior to that, I'd just been in this little theater group. The second I walked into this audition, I could tell that the people running it were like, oh my god. They were all just trying to not lose their shit. And same with all the guys that were in there. When I filled out an application that asked about hobbies, I answered, cleaning my room—just weird stuff. When I left the audition, I thought to myself, I'm gonna be on this show. I just had this definite confidence that they were going to put me on the show. When I left the audition and walked outside down the street, people were practically walking into the sides of buildings and hitting lampposts. I just went, Do not ignore this. This is real. This is something. This is power. 

NADIA LEE COHEN Did you have the voice developed already?  

PAUL REUBENS  Yes. The voice was from a play I did long before that. I just mixed a bunch of stuff. You know, similar to what you said earlier, I've had to answer: how did I create Pee-wee? And where did the voice come from? You would think after this many years I would have a better story or I would at least make up a lie that would be interesting. But I don't. When you do these things, you’re just creating something that becomes something later on.    

NADIA LEE COHEN Yeah, it just takes form—kind of like a snowball, which rolls until eventually it stops and looks exactly like Pee-wee. Does Pee-wee like anything that you don't like? 

PAUL REUBENS  Oh, I think probably a lot of things. Yeah. I think that if you're hiding behind the character, then there's at least something. I've been doing it for so long that there was a point when I decided I was going to have to change the rules for Pee-wee and allow him to do things and be things he wasn't originally, just because it started to get a little stale for me, and there were other things I wanted to do. Early on, I was in a comedy group and I had lots of other characters. I had about ten alter egos before Pee-wee.  

NADIA LEE COHEN Did they all have looks? 

PAUL REUBENS They were all very detailed, but really different from Pee-wee, and nothing like the kind of impact that Pee-wee had. I feel like what was going on in art school in the ‘70s was performance art and conceptual art. So for me, Pee-wee Herman was always like conceptual art and performance art. And the conceptual part of it, the performance art part of it was my secret—that I wasn't really that person. Because I tried really hard to make it seem like he was a real person. 

Nadia wears glasses by l.a.Eyeworks.

NADIA LEE COHEN If you were invited to something, would they expect you to come as Pee-wee? 

PAUL REUBENS Well, the point was that no one even knew who Paul was. No one. For example, when Pee-wee's Big Adventure premiered and my credit came up as a screenwriter, nobody knew who that was. No one knew Paul Reubens had anything to do with Pee-wee Herman because I spent a lot of energy never doing anything out of character. I just thought that if people thought I was an actor, they'd be like, oh yeah, whatever. There was a guy that inspired me in a conceptual way named Tiny Tim. He was a freak, but you never went, oh, that's an act. People were like,  oh my god, he's a freaky person. There was also an act on the Ed Sullivan show who had an alter ego. This is when I was four or five years old. His name was Bill Dana and he would come out with this character named Jose Jimenez who was a Bolivian astronaut. It was very, very similar to Andy Kaufman’s foreign man character. And the third or fourth time watching I realized, wait a minute, this is all made up. He's not really this guy. And I never thought about that again on a conscious level until I met him years later at an autograph show. 

NADIA LEE COHEN I’m trying to think of the British equivalent. Which would probably be Alan Partridge or Alistair McGowan’s Big Impression. I remember being mesmerized at the concept of a person morphing their physicalities, mannerisms, and voice in order to become someone else. 

PAUL REUBENS Did it influence what you do now? 

NADIA LEE COHEN It must have, along with Catherine Tate, or Little Britain. England had a lot of impressionist shows.  

PAUL REUBENS One thing that is happening today culturally, is that it's harder and harder to set yourself apart.  

NADIA LEE COHEN Because we’re over saturated. 

PAUL REUBENS  Just to be cliche for a moment—Andy Warhol said, “in the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” And we live in a culture, at least in the United States, where lots of people seek fame, and social media is full of people who are trying to become known, and leave their mark. I think it's human nature to wanna leave your mark in some way. 

NADIA LEE COHEN  Did you see the Andy Warhol documentary where they used AI to remake his voice? Would you want that ever, because your fifteen minutes would be forever?  

PAUL REUBENS I'm hoping that I can, at some point, sell or lease my IP. And part of the lure of that is that it would include my digital scans so that you could make a Pee-wee movie long after I'm gone. And when I say that, people always ask about the voice, but by the time they can cheaply churn out an image of me that looks real, they’ll be able to figure out the voice as well. 

NADIA LEE COHEN But we all have so much more ability to create characters now. On the internet you can just pretend that you're living whatever life that you want to live and sell that to whoever's buying it. 

PAUL REUBENS So, how does art even fit into a time when things are so rotten, and horrible, and crazy, and weird, and mixed up? Who has the nerve to be an artist? You have to have some nerve to be an artist. And how do you, even in the art world, set yourself apart? You have set yourself apart completely. 

NADIA LEE COHEN I think it's the confrontation—you absorb what's going on, confront it, turn it into something comical and entertaining, and then show it to people. 

PAUL REUBENS  You know, I hadn't really considered how much in the comedy realm you are. Because in my opinion, most art doesn't include comedy. When you mix a little comedy into art, it makes a whole different thing.  

NADIA LEE COHEN Yes. Take Jordan Wolfson's work. I think he falls into the category of creating comical, dark, and probably quite offensive art to certain people. That’s right up my alley.  

PAUL REUBENS  But your work also transcends so many things. It encompasses so many things. Some of those alter egos are dark and some of them, you can ask, what's their socioeconomic background? Some of those people seem like they could be down on their luck. It’s all over the map. 

NADIA LEE COHEN  They’re a ‘Mr Potato Head’ hybrid of personal relationships or people I’ve seen down the shops. There’s one that's really representative of my uncle Terry, and he’s called Terry. There’s a continuous undercurrent of comedy with my family, my parents are always taking the piss out of each other and cracking jokes. My brother's a comic as well. 

PAUL REUBENS And your parents are funny?  

NADIA LEE COHEN  Yeah. My dad to laugh at and my mom to laugh with.   

PAUL REUBENS How lucky is that? I think it’s so incredibly lucky that my parents were funny— that I grew up with this real intense sense of humor, or irony, or both. 

NADIA LEE COHEN  Yes we are, I find that kind of irony rare in Los Angeles. I also have a lot of gay and camp influence. Are ‘camp’ or ‘kitsch’ annoying buzzwords to you? 

PAUL REUBENS I hate the word kitsch. It’s such an ugly word. I also appreciate that if you say kitsch to certain people, they're like, oh, I get it. I know what you mean.  

NADIA LEE COHEN Maybe we feel like we're above kitsch. 

PAUL REUBENS Not maybe—definitely. There's a sort of snobbery that I have to admit I do have in certain areas. In other areas, I feel just the opposite of that—like everyman kind of qualities, but I definitely feel snobbish about kitsch. 

NADIA LEE COHEN What's the literal definition of kitsch? I’m curious. Should we look it up? ‘Hey Siri what does Kitsch mean?’ 

SIRI Noun. Kitsch means art objects designed or considered to be in poor taste because of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an ironic or knowing way. 

NADIA LEE COHEN It basically describes exactly what we do. 

PAUL REUBENS So, therein lies why we don’t like it, because it’s so insulting.  (laughs) 

NADIA LEE COHEN It's so accurate, though. (laughs) 

PAUL REUBENS Maybe this is more a comment than a question. But it’s shocking how young you are. I guess I was around your age when I already had Pee-wee—I was thirty-two when I made Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and I had already been Pee-Wee for five years, but it’s admirable, and interesting, and amazing that you got it going on like this. I not only really appreciated the hell out of what you were doing at your exhibition, but it just raises all these possibilities of where you're going to go. To be young, and have your whole career ahead of you, and to be where you are right now, it's just staggering. 

NADIA LEE COHEN I wish little me doing the Tequila dance could hear what you just said now—thank you that really means a lot.  But back to you … can you tell me a little bit about playing Michael Jackson’s stunt double? Because I don’t know anything about this. 

PAUL REUBENS The answer to that is you'll have to wait until either my documentary comes out, or my memoir. 

NADIA LEE COHEN  Oh, that's such a great end-of-interview plug. You’ve done this before. (both laugh). I want to pretend that I was somebody’s stunt double too, but I'm not sure who it could be. 

Paul Reubens (né Rubenfeld was born on August 27, 1952 in Peekskill, New York. He privately fought cancer for several years before passing on July 30, 2023 in Los Angeles, CA. He is cherished and missed by fans of all ages from around the world and his work will continue to inspire for many generations.

Leave Your Thoughts On Boobs After the Tone: An Interview of Carly Randall

interview by Lara Monro

Carly Randall is a visual artist, filmmaker and creative producer. Her work explores issues and themes that specifically impact women in modern society. These include knife crime, online bullying  and filter culture, as seen in her multi-award-winning dance film, FILTERFACE: Double Tap to Like, which examines how social media filter culture affects the mental health of young women. 

In 2022, Carly was awarded a Develop Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England to create a 2-minute-long, educational art film that exposes the language men use to talk about women’s breasts, highlighting the ubiquitously misogynistic and objectifying attitudes. Carly set up a hotline for teenage boys and young men to share their honest opinions on women’s breasts via voicemail. She created posters to promote the hotline, strategically placing them in prime locations around London’s East End Borough of Hackney (sometimes up to 200 a go), and shared with universities, colleges and friends who posted them in city centres nationally to ensure a diverse response that fairly depicts the breadth of the UK. To accompany the voicemails, Carly worked with a casing agent to bring together a selection of women from around the UK to shoot and film their breasts—those which our patriarchal society have deemed “undesirable": too flat, too big, odd nipples…

Carly has created a unique social experiment that creatively dramatizes the disparity between the ‘fantasy’ and the ‘reality’ of women’s breasts as a result of unrealistic representations created by the porn industry, perpetuated across social media and reaffirmed by patriarchal conditioning. I spoke with Carly about her motivations behind the art piece, how Playboy inspired her backdrop for the art film, and her main takeaways from listening to the voicemails. 

LARA MONRO: When did you get the idea to create a film that examines how young men of today view women’s breasts and what would you say were your biggest motivations for making the film? 

CARLY RANDALL: The film was conceived one evening whilst watching the Edgar Wright documentary on the weird and wonderful Sparks Brothers. On hearing their 1970s track “Tits,” I was struck by lyrics which, exposed a man’s disappointment at his wife’s breasts no longer being “a source of fun and games” having been repurposed to nourish his newborn son. It made me curious to explore to what extent the male gaze still exists within society today.

I’m also fascinated by technology’s impact on the growth and development of young people. A few years ago we looked at the effect social media was having on young girls' mental health with our film FilterFace: Double Tap To Like and it felt timely to turn our attention to young men, especially with the rise of toxic influencers like Andrew Tate. In the age of the iPhone, sexualized imagery of women is readily available to young men whether streamed through sex/porn websites, shared on Whatsapp and Snapchat, or disguised as an innocent influencer dance on TikTok. I wanted to create an educational art film that exposed the language men use to talk about women while presenting a cross section of what real women's breasts look like. The aim was to encourage young men to interrogate their current perceptions, or those of their peers, by debunking the unhealthy and unrealistic depictions society places on the female form.

MONRO: What do you want viewers to think/feel as a result of watching TITS? 

RANDALL: I think it will elicit different reactions. Some people may find it amusing, some disturbing, some embarrassing and some offensive. It’s uncomfortable watching because you are being shown these beautiful headless nudes whilst hearing audio that is quite crude and coarse. The comments range from being quite innocent and playful to being a bit creepy, but ultimately, they boil down to the female form being objectified by the opposite sex. 

MONRO: This film was made possible through an Arts Council England grant, can you tell me more? 

RANDALL: The Arts Council has a DYCP grant which enables creative-minded people to develop their artistic practice, whether that’s poetry, dance, filmmaking, or any other medium. It’s an incredible opportunity to set aside some time to carry out research and development into your practice, and then craft and hone those skills.

MONRO: What was your casting process for the women? 

RANDALL: I worked alongside the casting agent, Lane Casting, to find the women featured in the film. Lane reached out to women through multiple channels, including through their network, through flyering, and also researching specific groups on Facebook with responsive audiences like arts, modeling and even some nudist groups. It was important to make it clear to everyone what the film was about. This way, we could be sure to attract people who connected with the project.

In addition, I posted a series of Instagram stories and had some female friends re-share on their profiles. I had such an incredible response and quickly developed a one-on-one dialogue with the women who had reached out. It was great, as I was able to get an idea of their stories from early on in the casting process.  

Off the back of this, I held Zoom interviews with each of the women to find out about their breasts. Due to the sensitivity around nudity, I was not able to actually see any breasts until the day of the shoot. This made the zoom interviews incredibly important as I was essentially casting blind and relying on our conversations to understand their insecurities around their breasts.

MONRO: What was your process on shoot day? Did you have a specific way of working with the women: guiding them on how to position themselves or was it more intuitive/organic? 

RANDALL: Prior to shooting, I researched 1920s pinup posters, which back then tended to be illustrated where a woman would pose for an artist. Typically, these depicted over-sexulaised images of women with small waists, large, pert breasts, and curvaceous buttocks. I was keen to flip the narrative and hijack these poses to depict real beauty so each woman was assigned a pose, which would celebrate their particularly unique breasts. Working with my co-director we then drew up 3-5 camera moves, which complemented the nuances of each set of breasts.

On the day of the shoot, I wanted the women to feel at ease and like they were entering a safe space where they could relax and let go of their inhibitions. For this reason, we had an all-female film crew, closed set, and music. The entire crew brought a great energy on set which made filming fun and laid back. With only 30 minutes per woman, we had to move fast, but working with 16mm film means you spend more time planning, and less time shooting as the film is so precious. Ailsa [Aikoa], our DP, was incredible and captured each of the ladies with a real sensitivity.

Working with real people, you need to be empathetic and nurturing when directing, so it was really important to develop a relationship with them ahead of the shoot. In addition to this, I was mindful that they were being asked to perform nude, which would make anyone feel vulnerable, so I was conscious to check in that they were feeling comfortable and maintained conversation throughout filming. 

MONRO: Can you tell me about your stylistic approach to the film set? 

RANDALL: The red backdrop was inspired by Playboy Magazine who adopted the color from its launch in 1953, and used it heavily throughout their sixty-seven years. It was featured on their iconic masthead within wardrobe as well as a backdrop behind scantily clad women. Through the use of this red-colored backdrop, I wanted to take the power of the Playboy red, a color used to promote sexualized imagery of women, and subvert its use to showcase real female beauty.

In addition to this, I used simple cuts of fabric to drape under or behind the women to create a softness to the environment that contrasted the crudeness of the audio voice messages. 

MONRO: You set up a hotline for teenage boys and young men (16 - 30) to share their answering machine messages on how they view breasts. Was it popular and were there any messages that stood out (for good and/or bad reasons?)

RANDALL: We received roughly 500 calls ranging from 5 seconds to 2 minutes. Some people just wanted to shout “tits” down the line, while others went into great depth sharing their unfiltered thoughts. It was a really intriguing and eye opening experience sifting through hours of audio ranging from the complimentary to the crude. There were also some very similar themes (unsurprisingly) most men seemed to like round, squashy, big, pert or jiggly breasts. There was also a couple who rang in that definitely sounded like they were getting off as the boy described his favorite breasts and a girl giggled in the background—it was all getting a little kinky before the line went dead.

MONRO: What were your biggest takeaways from the hotline and the messages that were left? 

RANDALL: People like to talk about breasts. Considering the limited distribution of the hotline posters, lots of people happily gave up their time to call in and share their views. It was interesting to discover this was clearly a subject matter that people want to express their opinion on. 

MONRO: What did you enjoy most about this creative project? 

RANDALL: The unknown. We were totally at the mercy of the material organically gathered.

MONRO: You recently became a mother. Did this experience impact/influence how you approached the film?

RANDALL: I was expecting a baby boy at the time of developing and filming TITS, and in the back of my mind I was wondering what kind of young man he will grow up to be, and whether he would be influenced by the world around him.

MONRO: Will there be a sequel to TITS? 

RANDALL: You Betcha! I can’t divulge too much, but I’ll just say we’re thinking of switching things up a bit.

Embodied Resonance: An Interview Of Pop Sensation Mandy Harris Williams

interview by Summer Bowie
creative direction & photography by Dana Boulos
styled by Janet Gomez (all looks No Sesso)
makeup by Yasmin Istanbouli
photography assisted by Bono Melendrez
produced by BRAINFREEZE Productions
special thanks to Alldayeveryday

Mandy Harris Williams is a renaissance woman working across more media than one could reasonably hyphenate. On social media, in her monthly #brownupyourfeed radio hour on NTS, and with her myriad published essays, she challenges us to consider critical theories on race, gender, sexuality, and above all, privilege. She dares us to meet the most divisive aspects of our charged political culture with a caring ethic that prioritizes those most deprived of our love and compassion. Offline, her DJ sets are like a blast of Naloxone to the automatic nervous system with the power to reanimate the rhythm in even the shyest of wallflowers. After studying the history of the African diaspora at Harvard and receiving a masters of urban education at Loyola Marymount, Harris spent seven years as an educator in low-income communities. From there, she expanded her educational modalities to include a conceptual art practice, musical production informed by years of vocal training, and a lecture format of her own dialectic design. These “edutainment” experiences are one part college seminar, one part church sermon, and one part late-night talk show with a heavy dose of consensual roasting. It’s a Friar’s Club for an intellectual, intersectional, and internet-savvy generation. These performances draw us in with their vibey bass lines and hooks before they throw us under the quietly segregated bus that we’re still struggling to rectify. Mandy and I sat by the fire one lovely winter night in Los Angeles to talk about the contours of fascism, algorithmic injustice, her latest film for the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, and her upcoming residency at MoMa PS1.

SUMMER BOWIE: How do you think that anti-Blackness expresses itself differently in Black communities versus non-Black communities?

MANDY HARRIS WILLIAMS: I think you have the categories of it, and then you have the contours of it, and the contour is more the West African phenotype. It's less viable in a lot of ways for things like respect, and esteem, for love, and largely for interpersonal value. It doesn't matter whether you're Black or not Black, you know, because there are so many phenotypes in the world of people who identify as Black. And so it's very easy to do the same shit, especially when you're trying to justify yourself in a world that feels a little bit affronting. Everybody has their shit that they're going through, and so everybody, no matter what their race is, wants to feel oppressed (laughs) and everybody, no matter what their race is, is also racist. (laughs)

BOWIE: Arthur Jafa talks about subject position a lot and the way that we're so accustomed to putting ourselves in white, male subject positions because we're so used to seeing narratives where they play the protagonists, which is why they feel so entitled to our empathy. But the same goes for the types of Black protagonists we're accustomed to seeing. There are the phenotypes that we have become accustomed to empathizing with and then there are the ones that tend to play the supporting roles.

WILLIAMS: I did a lecture and I said something about how the movie Sideways is the pinnacle of that art form when it comes to those entitlements between both race and gender. (laughs) I'm not going to say something bodyist about whether this man [Paul Giamotti] has value as a sexual object to others. But, what I will say is that I'm not going to deny that there is a market wherein “body” has real material consequences. So, holding both of those positions, there's still nothing lovable about him.

BOWIE: That's true.

WILLIAMS: And he is with these amazing women, right? And he gets the girl at the end, after doing...

BOWIE: ...Nothing for it. (laughs) The body economy has also become hyper-mobilized in the social media sphere. I'm curious how you see our algorithms working to enforce racial bias, gender bias, and ultimately white supremacy?

WILLIAMS: That's a very big question. I'll say there's a programmer bias. There's a moderation bias. There was this issue where you couldn't write like, men are trash on Facebook [without being shadow banned], but meanwhile, they just came out with this MIT research article about how Facebook was sponsoring misinformation forums—like actively aiding them.

BOWIE: Interesting. Wow.

WILLIAMS: Yeah. That's a doozy that came out in the Facebook Papers, which we haven't noticed because these motherfuckers control the way that we access information. And so, you have the issue regarding who has the resources to put up this internet space.

BOWIE: When did you start #brownupyourfeed and where did that come from?

WILLIAMS: That came from me looking at people's feeds and not seeing a lot of Brown people. You know, everybody’s talking about Black Lives Matter, and maybe they do have Black people in their life, but in this place where people are engaging in an autodiaristic practice, it’s not something that most of them are documenting or addressing. So, it does provide some sort of statement about the way you think other people value you. It would just surprise me. I would look through people's stuff and I'd be like, "Huh? Am I the only Black person getting around?"

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BOWIE: You did a great lecture on nose privilege, which is something that’s often overlooked. We rarely acknowledge the role that our noses play in the doors that get opened or closed. I have one of those beauty apps on my phone that I like to use for caricaturing people’s faces, and one of the strangest things about it is the nose modifier. There's not an option to make the nose wider, only thinner. It makes you wonder where this perception comes from—that there's this one-way path to improvement?

WILLIAMS: (laughs) Right. I think it's white supremacy.

BOWIE: As a Black woman, what are some of the algorithmic biases that you have to push through on Instagram? And what are some of the ways that you employ it in order to spread your message?

WILLIAMS: I mean, I don't wanna speak too much about my particular experience, because you can never know what would've happened in your life with a different visage. So, I try to consider the general contours of what is taking place and how I might be subject to that. Or how I might not be subject to that. This gets back into that thing of everybody wanting to be oppressed and everyone being racist all at once. There is a canonical unwanted, and a canonical desired, and I don't think I'm too close to either side of the spectrum. For example, I have some privileges as far as where I'm from, how I speak, the institutions I've attended, the way I look, everything. The way I like to approach it is like, in this stream of technology and communication, has there ever been a time when oppression or bias was broken? Because we know for sure that slavery was a tool of social control. So the question is: when did that right itself? Because what really grinds the gears of fearful white people is that feeling that you're just picking it out of the sky. So, I could say I'm oppressed because of this or that, but the question I have is: when did that stop, in what stage of technology, in what economic sense? In what romantic sense? In what political power sense? You look at our run of presidents, and I guess we have had our first Black woman president for seven minutes while Biden was under, but we've never elected one.

BOWIE: What's interesting about this phenomenon of everyone denying their internalized racist tendencies is that they’re usually very quick to acknowledge the oppression or adversity they’ve had to overcome personally. Where could all this struggle be coming from if everyone were so respectful of one another?

WILLIAMS: I mean, intersectionality is the best bet, and then you have to tell the truth about the other stuff between those two things. Like a care that responds to the reality of how intense white supremacy has been and how much it has gone unbroken to this day. And then, you have to balance that with a care ethic. It's both critique and care. So, I'm gonna take care of this more, because I know historically it has been subject to more oppression and less care, and those tend to go together. One means of oppression is to not care for people, to position them as unlovable, or just invisible.

BOWIE: Right, often when people say things like, "Nobody can take a joke anymore," they don't ask who is being cast as the butt of the joke and how frequently they're cast in that role. Back in the ‘90s, bell hooks talked about the term ‘PC’ and how it was improperly framed as a way of policing rhetoric, rather than a call toward respectful sensitivity. There's this strange backlash where people are honestly asking why they need to care and why they can't willfully deny that we as humans are sensitive.

WILLIAMS: I don't even feel like backlash is harsh enough. It's just the contour of fascism. And this is a cycle. Every time there is some measure of civil rights or liberation achieved, it's followed by this backlash, so to speak, but it's happened so many times that we can see it's just a way by which the conservative powers that be can reclaim their positionality and expand it.

BOWIE: How do you feel now that it's been almost two years since the initial uprisings of 2020. We're seeing major changes in some regards, and then business as usual in others. Did it all go down the way you had expected?

WILLIAMS: The challenge of not being jaded is trying to actually believe that change is possible. I would like it a lot if there were continued emphasis on progress and change. The response has been very dispersed. Some people are staying the course, some people are tuned out and over it. Some people don't want Black people to be the center of attention anymore, or they're annoyed—just immature shit. And I don't know if I expected it to go any particular way. I tried to strike while the iron was hot, and I also feel like I've been doing it for a long time. So, it's good to have some more eyes on the things you're talking about, or people starting to be like, "Huh? Okay. Maybe there's something to those words that are intense, or harsh, or implicate me, or that I have to make some sort of change. Maybe I don't have that much spiritual or material security around my behavior.” What has really happened, though, is a lot of people have just checked out.

BOWIE: A lot of people felt like they were being asked to do a lot of extra things in their life, rather than just asking what they could immediately stop doing. Your work really teases out the very subtle ways that people express their anti-Blackness and how egregious these subtleties prove to be over time. Do you feel like you've always seen the world through this lens?

WILLIAMS: Being a Black child on the Upper West Side at this strange, progressive institution as a kid, we were always talking about social issues and civil rights. This is what people fear when we talk about critical race theory in the classroom. I had enough theoretical buckets and language to understand some of the weirdness that would happen with me. I was always like, Why am I different? What did that mean? What makes me different from most of the kids at my school? What makes me different from other people in my family? What makes me different from other Black and Brown kids? I felt different in a lot of ways. I don't think that every person with a mixed cultural experience necessarily has this pattern of thoughts, but I do think it puts you in a place where you have to deal with marginality in a way that gives it a real multi-applicable texture. It's a seasoning, like salt. 

BOWIE: It's just in everything. How do you combine the aesthetics and the politics of what you do through your art?

WILLIAMS: I like to look at the ways that fascism creates climates of anti-intellectualism. So, I made this film for dis and I shared it at the Centre d'Art Contemporain in Geneva, and for me, the container of intellectualism is also one of these things. Being a Black woman, or being fuller-bodied, or being intellectual are all ways in which fascism wraps itself around my experience. So for that, I worked with this Edward Said essay, Representations of the Intellectual. It was a series of lectures he did in 1993 at Oxford where he talks about the definition and the role of an intellectual: how it’s a persona of a bygone era, and how industry and specialization encouraged those who demonstrate intellectual prowess to become marketing geniuses or programmers. It talks about the ways in which anti-intellectualism is encouraged by fascism and how not having an intellectual culture enables certain phenomena—like dog whistles—that reinforce structural racism and genderism. The film itself doesn't have a racial component to it, which is really funny. It's implied by offering myself as the filmic image, and it also talks about intentionality with the subjects we choose to address in media.

BOWIE: How did the concept of the film come about and how did you go about making it?

WILLIAMS: We were in the uprising period, maybe a little bit post, and people were looking to Palestinian scholars because of the violence against Palestinians overseas. Those two moments were nesting on one another such that you could look at an entire—not racially or ethically-specific—politic of the subaltern, or the “other.” In that moment, lots of people were looking to theorists like Said, because of his ability to express this general condition of politically marginalized people. But I gravitated to one of his lesser explored works and I was using that as a means to understand how critical thinking, writing, theorizing—intellectualism, generally speaking, is a part of a protest and liberation tradition. I took a lot of solace in understanding what my position was. It sounds a little bit arrogant to say you're an intellectual, but part of my process with listening to this work was trying to understand where I fit into all of this. I'm not out on the streets. I'm not organizing in a traditional sense. Why is my voice important? Is this navel-gazing? Is it selfish? Is it bourgeoisie? And I felt really validated. It also gave me a roadmap for what sorts of interventions are important for me to make. Things like talking about intellectualism in an era when it's so clear that critical race theory has become the maligning of woke, which is ultimately about Black enlightenment. And I can see how those things being maligned has this particular contour that allows for fascism to pervade, and anti-Blackness to take place in a time when it's really needed by some people. They are clinging to it, and to circle back, you can see it play out as a form of algorithmic injustice. You hear about these Facebook Papers and how they're actually farming misinformation. It's a pretty damning look at how all of these systems are working together to control the way information is distributed. So the film is a protest gesture, located at a corner of the work against fascism as I see it right now.

BOWIE: You recently did a performance lecture at Oxy Arts, which is a public art space rooted in social justice. This was for the closing of their Encoding Futures exhibition where artists that work in AI and AR proposed more just visions for the future. Do you see any immediate ways that we can improve technology to make it less fascist?

WILLIAMS: That's a great question. In order to make anything less fascist, we really have to—on some level—become less fascist, right? For example, this soda can [points to La Croix], we don't know who the manufacturers are, or where the factory is, who owns those means of can-making, who's profiting most off of the can makers' labor? And then, what's the likelihood of those can makers being X, Y, or Z ethnicity, versus other tiers of the can industry?

BOWIE: Sure. Who's mining the aluminum?

WILLIAMS: Right. The thing that keeps me encouraged, or not terribly depressed, is that I can be athletic and a little scatterbrained about whatever my intervention is gonna be. Because I'm not gonna state the same thing over and over again. I refuse. So, broadly calling myself a conceptual artist or believing in myself as that, or believing in the interventions that come of that is based on trying to come at it from many different angles. In the way that a teacher has to come through many different modalities. You have a phonics song, and then you have phonics movements, and then you have phonics posters. I don't really want to specialize. I could get a PhD, and I'm not saying that wouldn't be fun at some point in time, but there's also this increasing jargon the more you get specialized. So, I like to use media like film and music. I've been really great at writing music recently, and it's exciting, but the music comes really easily and I like the idea of the container of the rock star, or the pop star. It's an entertainment class whereby Black people have far more esteem or prestige than in other spaces. Tons of influence. Nikita Gale, is an artist who I had the pleasure and privilege of talking with in a couple of structured formats, and she talks about how performance inspires her work, but she's interested in playing with how performance can be not of the body. And my takes are all very bodily. There's always this very embodied measure of my spoken word. It's always a lyrical didactic, and that's the prism that everything's going through. So, whether it's film, documentary, or maybe you have some voiceover, or essay, or music, I really just enjoy using my voice. I don't think there's a category for it, but I sometimes call myself a vocal artist, because it's all about this embodied resonance.

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BOWIE: That’s a perfect way to put it. Your lectures really do transcend the standard format in a very unique way. A critical theory may be expressed in all seriousness, or it may be done comically in a way that just comes out and bites you (laughs), or it becomes a song and dance. It hits our bodies in different ways, it hits our feelings in different ways, and it's a communal experience. You're almost like a preacher, but the experience is this cross between church, a talk show, and a college lecture. So, what else do you have in the works this coming year?

WILLIAMS: I’m really excited to release more music this year and play with the format of musical performance, and recording. I’ll be working with my long-time dance music family, A Club Called Rhonda, for those releases, and that music is a text that will fold into the performative lectures, as the Oxy lecture did. I have a residency at MoMA PS1 from February to May, and what I'm really excited to do is take the format of that Oxy lecture and expand on it, because as I was creating it, I was like, "Oh wow. This is the pocket." This is a place I could stay and move the focus ever so slightly to make a repeating series of work. My best friend, Paul Whang was the production designer, my sister Yves B. Golden was the DJ, and I just really loved making it with my friends. It's real bliss work. I'm also touched by Audre Lorde's essay, Uses of the Erotic, because at the crosshatch of the lecture that I performed at Oxy and what I'll be expanding upon for the PS1 residency is the spiral of how the critical and the erotic feed one another as a source of wisdom. Part of the reason I talk so much about the right to be loved or considered beautiful is because while they might seem less important than something like civil rights or economic equality, there are these soft rights that through social design become instantiated as rules regarding who should earn what based on how they look, and then how they might be loved or cherished.

BOWIE: I think that essay should be required reading for all high schoolers. There's a lot to be said about the systemic repression of the erotic, particularly in women, and even more for women of color, because of the power that it holds. Likewise, it speaks to what you were saying about it sounding arrogant to say you're an intellectual. Regardless of one’s gender, we’re often made to feel shame for embracing what feels like the fullest expression of ourselves. Can you tell us a little more about what those lectures will explore?

WILLIAMS: I'm going to be working on a suite of music and lectures that deconstruct the blues origin story. The first, I think, is about sonic Blackface, the second is about the lightening and depoliticizing of the blues mama archetype in film and music, and I don't know what this third lecture is about, but I think  it's called Dances with Dolezal. (laughs) 

BOWIE: I mean, Billie Eilish needs choreography to accompany her tunes, doesn't she?

WILLIAMS: Yeah. The note under that is “gestural/auditory Blackface.”

BOWIE: It's as though we need to give certain white celebrities the permission to take on these contours you refer to of the Black persona so that we can give ourselves the permission to continue appropriating as well.

WILLIAMS: Yeah. That's what @idealblackfemale is about. It's a reclamation of me taking on a persona. I like to think of it as assholery a little bit. The nomenclature of the whole thing is meant to be a little bratty, you know?

BOWIE: It feels like a very clear response to the way that Black women are discouraged from being as cheeky as they wanna be, or as salty as they wanna be for fear of sounding bitter. And why? White men get to bitch and moan about every little inconvenience.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, there's this funny debate about the term incel and which community it really comes from. There's a line of argument and study that says it actually comes from Black women who are among the least married populations in the US—along with Asian men—and are both structurally and desirability-oppressed.

BOWIE: Right. They like to claim that the violence of the incel comes from the fact that he's not getting laid, which is his “natural right,” but are young, white men the least laid people?

WILLIAMS: (laughs) There are a lot of other populations that are structurally less laid.

Tactile With The World: An Interview of Photographer & Filmmaker Lewis Khan

interview by Lara Monro
photographs by Lewis Khan

British Photographer and filmmaker, Lewis Khan, uses London as one of his many creative resources. The city has great sentimental importance to the native South Londoner, who has lived on Bonnington Square for most of his life. Tucked away behind the traffic of Vauxhall, the square is one of 300+ housing cooperatives in London, owned and run by its tenants. It has a unique and fascinating history that owes much to the squatters who moved in during the ‘80s as a preventative measure to avoid demolition of the residential buildings. The community set up a whole foods shop and vegetarian café, which is still there to this day. 

Unsurprisingly, Khan draws much influence from the solid foundations of his local community. As a result, his interests focus heavily on the study of emotions, relationships and belonging. Working with stills and moving image, his achievements include Theatre, a photo series documenting the realities of medical professionals over a period of four years at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital and West Middlesex Hospital in London and It’ll Soon Be Nighttime (2021). This filmic work focuses on a long-standing friendship with the 58-year-old George, who Khan met at the age of fifteen. 

Khan adopts the collaborative and inclusive mentality of Bonnington Square within his creative practice, which prompts a personal and insightful approach to his work. He spoke with Autre to discuss why he is drawn to photography and film, his recent trip to the States, and why he enjoys finding beauty in the small things. 

LARA MONRO: Can you tell me a bit about your creative practice and your journey with it? When did it begin?

LEWIS KHAN: I’m a photographic artist from south London. I work with stills and moving image, and my work is a  study of emotion, relationships, and belonging. I’m interested in the experiences that the pursuit of taking pictures opens up, particularly portraits. Taking photos for me is a way of being tactile with the world. I enjoy finding beauty in the overlooked, and using the medium as a means to form connections with people and places.  

What do you seek to uncover through your work and what are some of your biggest achievements to date?

There have been some amazing milestones for sure; early on having my graduate work Georgetown exhibited at the Photographers Gallery, having Theatre published as a limited-edition photo book in 2020, being represented by At Trayler. But to be honest, I’m just so grateful that I get to do something I love full time. I realized it the first few shoots back after everything had been off for so long with the pandemic. I’d never taken a moment to pause before then. I guess l was always wrapped up in trying to do this, and that, and the next thing.

MONRO: London is one of your most important creative resources. What is it about the city that  you find so intriguing/inspiring? 

KHAN: London is home, it’s where I grew up and have always lived. I feel like a product of it and that doesn’t feel like a negative thing. I see it as a foundational place, a base. Familiar and well trodden.

MONRO: Can you tell me about your community in Bonnington Square and what it means to you? 

KHAN: Bonnington Square is a deeply special place to me. It’s an ex-squatting, now housing co-operative, community in Vauxhall in South London. It’s where I grew up along with a lot of my closest friends.  What’s really amazing is that because of the housing co-operative we’re all still able to live there as adults. Everyone moves houses around the street quite a bit and a lot of our parents still live there. A lot of our generation are there too, and now even some of our generation have kids, so there is the next generation living on the Square. Everyone knows everyone on the street, it’s kind of village life. Eastenders tucked away next to the massive traffic junction in zone 1 London. I feel really lucky to have grown up in that environment, the sense of community, wider family. Growing up here definitely shaped my outlook on things.

MONRO: You have worked with film when documenting your community of friends and family. Your most recent work: It’ll Soon Be Night Time, follows one specific character, George. Can you  tell me about him and your relationship? 

KHAN: George was someone I met as a teenager, after he moved into a flat on Bonnington Square. It’s a super social street, everyone knows each other, and there always used to be a big bunch of us out skateboarding, playing football in the road, hanging out smoking on the benches, etc. George used to blast music and sing, walk with his radio and flags, so it didn’t take long before he got to know everyone.  

As we got more acquainted we would chat in the street, and George would often talk with heart about his past. Certain names and places would come up again and again, and I started noticing those same names written on lamp posts and pavements around the area too. I didn’t really understand George’s story in full, but I felt the emotional weight of what he was telling me.  

In 2013, I made a short film entitled Georgetown about him. The process ended up being a way for me to better understand George’s story more substantially. The act of “doing the film” gave license for us both to speak on things more deeply, and reason to spend extended periods of time hanging out. This is a good example of what I meant by the experiences that the pursuit of taking pictures opens up.

Since making Georgetown, George and myself have remained close. We see each other a lot and speak often on the phone. During the various Covid-19 lockdowns and being isolated indoors, we were speaking on the phone a lot, and I started to see a specialness in the ordinary chit chat of the phone calls I hadn’t noticed before. I bought a recording device for my phone and started to record the calls we were having. I liked that the words were now tangible things, not lost to the air. I think because we were all living so isolated from one another, the value in these fairly ordinary exchanges felt increased. I didn’t see George much over that period but heard his voice a lot and  started to find our phone call space unique. These recordings then became the motivation and the basis for the video piece It’ll Soon Be Night Time. 

screen capture from It’ll Soon Be Night Time by Lewis Khan

MONRO: What have you found most informative about working with film and photography? 

KHAN: Probably the number of different experiences, places, people, settings that I’ve had time with through film and photography. It’s a privileged position of getting to live all these different snippets of different ways of life.  

MONRO: Why do you think you are drawn to film and photography as your main mediums? 

KHAN: I enjoy their foundation in the real world, and how they enable me to have a specific type of interaction with people and my environment.

MONRO: You are currently travelling around New Mexico. Can you tell me about the trip and what you hope to gain from it? 

KHAN: Yeah that’s right, I’m out here at the moment. The reasons for coming here were a mixture of things. For the last couple of years I’ve been working on projects where I’m either exploring something personal or I’m working with someone, or a place that is close to me emotionally. This was in part due to the pandemic; that much more isolated life caused me to focus on making work that was more introspective. My practice is largely documentary-based so the work needs to be "of" something. Sometimes with an idea or concept that isn’t immediately so straightforward to represent through documentary photography or video, that figuring out process can be quite lengthy and at times I can get quite bogged down mentally. Having finished those pieces of work I found myself needing a switch up in process, a palette cleanser to cut through some of that previous mental clogginess. I wanted some time to travel, which is  something I haven’t done since pre-pandemic, just some focused time to make work in an intuitive way. I’ve always been fascinated by the desert, the plants and the tufts that grow there, the concept of an ‘oasis’ I find interesting. How humans are interacting with that terrain I also find interesting. These points along with my overarching interests in belonging and human experience made me take this trip.

MONRO: What is next for you? Do you have anything in the pipeline, any creative goals? 

KHAN: One of the pieces of work mentioned above I’m yet to put out, It’ll Soon Be Night Time. It’s a video piece made of phone recordings between me and George during the pandemic and then video  footage mainly of times before that when we were going places and doing things, Vauxhall/ Bonnington Square and people-focused mainly. It’s a very personal piece of work so it’s always interesting to see how that will be received, but I'm really looking forward to giving it an audience.

To Erase a Cloud: An Interview Of Jim Longden Following The Release Of His Debut Short

interview by Lara Monro
photographs by Domino Leaha

The London-based artist Jim Longden has released his debut short, To Erase a Cloud. Shot on 16mm film, the twenty-minute piece is “a sort of crash-course to the introductions of filmmaking.” To Erase a Cloud delves into the harsh realities of grief. The poet and actor Sonny Hall, a good friend of Longden, plays the painfully tormented, reckless and broken main protagonist, John Little.

The opening scene shows Little living a depressing existence in his dirty apartment; drinking dregs of empty beer cans and lighting half smoked fags as the early morning sun seeps in. We catch Little staring at his reflection in a cracked mirror; a symbol for his fractured state of mind and the result of his self-inflicted isolation spurred on from the loss of his mother.

We meander from the realities of Little’s daily existence, which includes taking a drunken cab to his mother’s grave, robbing a porno from the local off-licence, and surreal dream sequences that question the perception of Little’s reality. The poetic filmwork was made by Longden during the height of the covid pandemic. Although it may seem a desperate state of affairs, Longden manages to find beauty in the bleakness. As the saying goes; without darkness there is no light. To Erase a Cloud highlights humanity’s resilience to carry on.

On a recent trip to Italy, Longden was shot by the Italian photographer, Domino Leaha for his interview with Autre. He is currently traveling around Europe, writing his next film.

LARA MONRO: Can you tell me about your most recent filmic work, To Erase a Cloud? 

JIM LONGDEN: It’s a film about a young man being at that age when he should be passing the stage of the growing-but-stained teenager he was before, and to now be at the stage of finally entering adulthood. He is in this awkward middle, between his teenage angst, and his ongoing frustration and bitterness for the world and it’s ways. His mother not being alive, and him not being around her often during his younger teenage years, has left the character in this wayward mould of growing and developing. The character has a menacing side to him, but holds this poetic, and theatrical demeanor at the same time. We see the raw sides of his persona, but also hear from the mind which he holds. 

We shot it in the year 2020; during the time of the pandemic. The film held this atmosphere of being set in an almost deserted ghost-town area, which resembled points of reality near to those times. I had written and directed the film when I was twenty, it was to me, a sort of crash-course to the introductions of filmmaking. The shooting was a three-day experience which I learned a lot from. I found the possible perception of the more experienced members of the team interesting, because of the fact that they were seeing people acting on screen for their first times, whilst also being directed by a director who had never directed before! I see the film almost as being the equivalent to a student film, a directorial debut. And, in that sense, I am pleased with the outcome. 

MONRO: The main protagonist is the poet, Sonny Hall. How did you come to cast Hall in the film?

LONGDEN: Sonny has been a friend of mine for years. I knew he would be able to also help me with parts of the writing within it. And, he held a willingness to do things on camera, which I felt other’s may not have felt comfortable doing. Those stunts like him running into the car door of Benny Benson, and him punching the mirror after slapping himself as he faces it, were tough to see for certain people. When doing the rehearsals for that scene of him and Benny, he kept diving into the damn door in the run-throughs, we did not have a stunt supervisor present at any moment. He ended up limping for a few days after, but it was good to see this devotion from him. 

MONRO: To Erase a Cloud feels surreal in the moments when we find ourselves inside the tormented mind of the protagonist. Can you tell me more about these creative scenes and your treatment for these?

LONGDEN: Trying to make this film as good as it could be, while sticking to a very low budget was tricky. The access we had to certain locations was limited, so I had to almost treat it as if it were a theatrical story being told on the stage. I think the cinematography matched what sort of themes and styles we were aiming for. The music too, in my eyes added this blanket to the film. We used music made by Matt Elliott for the soundtrack. I had been a fan of his for years from when Sonny introduced me to his music. I also added in two guitar pieces I had created for the original score.

MONRO: Was the film mainly script-based or did you rely on improvisation? 

LONGDEN: The story was mainly script-based. At a certain point, we had just enough time to fit in a newly thought up scene, which we rushed to film. And at another point, a scene we planned had to be cut due to it not working. Scenes like the Benny Benson one, had many improvised lines on his part, and certain movements as mentioned previously, could only be performed once, due to others being worried about the rightful code of health and safety. There are a lot of give and takes, sometimes they help, sometimes they don’t. The opening dance scene was an idea Sonny came up with, and on the day we were only able to film it in two takes.… Within a moment like that, the outline of the scene is there, but the rest is out of control, it is up to the subject to perform. We spent quite a while tweaking, adding, removing, changing things in the script, but at times, that could make one’s mind go around in circles. So, in that sense, I had to be careful and trust my instinct. 

MONRO: Do you have a favourite scene, or are there any that stand out most to you for any particular reason?

LONGDEN: I liked the writing in the scene where we enter the mind of Johnny Little. I also enjoy watching the dream sequence he has.

Film still

Film still

Film still

Film still

MONRO: It seems you mainly work with film and photography. Have these always been your preferred mediums? 

LONGDEN: Yes, they have. I had swerved within different lanes after leaving school, to survive and to keep myself busy. But, when I was younger, I wanted to become a professional football player. And when that dream faded, I was saved by the thrill of wanting to take photos and make films. 

MONRO: Are there other mediums you would like to introduce into your creative practice?

LONGDEN: Maybe joining a Gypsy guitar band or something? 

MONRO: Your website also features clothing. When did you first venture into fashion, and can you tell me what CAPO stands for? 

LONGDEN: The clothing is merely merchandise, which is how I am able to keep my stomach full.

MONRO: You left school at sixteen to follow your creative pursuits. Did you face difficulties infiltrating the creative world as a self-taught artist/filmmaker? 

LONGDEN: I wouldn’t say difficulties, I was more just upset at the fact that I didn’t know who to trust. I didn’t know what was real or not. I didn’t want to play snakes and ladders. I was at a blossoming, but vulnerable age, and didn’t want to have the blood sucked from me. I wanted to stay true to what I believed in, but at the same time, I needed to be able to move forward. It was an experience, that’s for sure. 

MONRO: Are you working on anything else at the moment?

LONGDEN: Over the past few years, I have been taking photographs for a book I want to create. It holds the working title, Where You Are When You Don’t Know Where You Are?. I really look forward to being at that blissful moment when I think the book is ready and complete. 

I also started writing passages, for what can maybe one day become a book. I am not certain of this happening any time soon though, I think I need more time to develop my writing before releasing it. But, it’s in motion, currently holding the working title of, Memoirs of a Balloon.

Love & Action: An Interview Of Director Fiona Jane Burgess

interview by Lara Monro

Fiona Jane Burgess, UK-based film director specializing in music videos, commercials, documentaries and fashion films, owes much of her career success to experiencing a number of challenges. Burgess found herself having to rethink her career path at 28, a time when she was also facing the realities of motherhood and the breakup of her band, Woman’s Hour. Fortunately, her natural flare as a director, which she exercised when shooting her own music videos, determined her career segue into film direction. Since delving into the film industry, Burgess has worked on diverse campaigns that span music videos, personal projects, and working with the UK’s No.1 baby feeding brand, Tommee Tippee, as well as some of fashion’s most recognized names, including Gucci and Burberry. 

A proud feminist, Burgess is attracted to projects that empower women and provoke debate, amongst many other themes and subjects. COVID-19 highlighted the economic constraints faced by women in the workplace and their predicament of being expected to sacrifice their own economic viability to provide care at home. Burgess recently posted on Instagram around the need to empower working mothers. She spoke passionately to Autre about the response to her recent post, a new film she’s directed for Nowness X AGL, motherhood, and the collective power of sisterhood.  

LARA MONRO: It is great to be speaking with you full stop and also timely given the amazing response you have received to your recent Instagram post around women in the workplace and childcare. Did you expect this reaction? 

FIONA JANE BURGESS: My mind is blown! I am so humbled by the response. These conversations aren't new, we just so rarely have them openly. For this reason, Instagram can be a powerful platform as it provides the ability to have these sorts of debates, and most importantly, allows others to see them. The burden of childcare on anyone is mammoth. This is bringing to the forefront what it means to be a parent in the film industry, but also the workplace at large. It shows the evident gender inequality that exists and that women are expected to take on the burden of childcare. It is comforting to know what I am saying resonates with so many, but at the same time, deeply frustrating and saddening as so many women feel stuck and trapped. One message that really resonated touched on the creative industry, where for many it isn't just about a financial incentive, but it’s also driven by passion and creative need. When women are forced out of these roles, their mental health suffers as a consequence of not having a creative outlet. This can provoke feelings of guilt, that being a mother isn't good enough. I can fully associate myself with this. I am a mother, but am not first and foremost a mother. It is part of my makeup but it is not my whole, and anyone who wants to simply label me as a mother is missing the point. I have so many different needs. I don't need to just give and receive love from my children. When women become mothers their identity gets put on hold. I disagree with that. How we facilitate mothers in the workplace is an essential, ongoing, question as we work to achieve gender equality.

film still for Tommee Tippee

film still for Tommee Tippee

film still for Tommee Tippee

film still for Tommee Tippee

film still for Tommee Tippee

film still for Tommee Tippee

film still for Tommee Tippee

MONRO: You changed professions at 28, the same year you became a mother to twins and ended up leaving your music career. How did you make the jump into moving image? 

BURGESS: When you become a mother, your identity comes into question and everything is focused on the baby. I needed more of a purpose. I was left completely questioning everything after the band broke up as it was so important for me to have my work and role. Around this time a few people asked me to make music videos for them since I had for Woman’s Hour. It made sense for me to do it for the band as it saved money, but I never saw it as a profession! Then, I did it and the penny dropped! It was a really exciting time and everything fell into place. It wasn't easy though. I threw myself into the new industry, but felt so out of my depth. It is such a big industry and I had no connections. I felt alone again in it and all I had was a burning desire and a small seed of self belief—and a very supportive partner. I began my journey. I hadn't pitched before, Suddenly I was sent briefs to pitch on and had to write treatments, which I had also never done. It was a good learning curve but at the same time, after a few months of rejection, I stopped pitching. I realized that I didn't have a crew of people I trusted and wanted to work with. So, I decided to connect with creatives that I did want to work with. It evolved from there. I met a choreographer online and we self-funded a film together. I directed and edited it and this allowed me to get an idea of what my interests were and what I wanted! Personally, my experience of having children was a very traumatizing one, but it also released a crazy energy in me; a desire to have a voice and not shy away from who I am. I was much less willing to compromise on my own happiness. I think this really helped me get to where I wanted to be.

MONRO: You recently directed a short film for Nowness X AGL. It is set within the recognizable, brutalist structure of the Tate Modern and your overarching theme is centered around an anthology of feminist writings from the 1970s Women’s Liberation Movement. Can you tell me more about that?

BURGESS: Yes. The [Feminist] Manifesto was a seminal piece in the feminist movement and allowed women from all walks of life to discuss their own experiences of womanhood; both positive and negative, and what they felt needed to change to create gender equality. There are so many differences between women, to collectively call women one thing is wrong. We aren't first and foremost anything. I don't have sisters (I have 3 brothers!) but in a wider context the sisters I choose—who I am collectively connected to—it felt that the manifesto tied in beautifully with what I was trying to get across through the film.

film still for Nowness x AGL

film still for Nowness x AGL

film still for Nowness x AGL

film still for Nowness x AGL

MONRO: How would you say the film embraces sisterhood? 

BURGESS: When I was invited to be part of this it was apparent that my role was not only to facilitate the technical aspect, but also to create a crew and a collective of people who would also input. It felt like the perfect opportunity to call on my sisterhood and embrace the power of our collectivity. I am so often trying to empower and connect with other female creatives, so with this film I ran with that opportunity. I didn't want the theme to be surface level, but part of the process. 

MONRO: The singer & songwriter, Lapsley, created a voiceover specifically for the film; can you tell me how this collaboration came about? 

BURGESS: I am such a fan of hers. Her album was the soundtrack to my 2020. It includes a number of songs around her experiences of being a woman, so I knew she would be interested in the theme. I sent her the Gloria Steinem quote: “Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. She will need her sisterhood,” and she came back to me with a beautiful song and very powerful voiceover for the film:

“We run in cycles, chase the morning, pave the way like those before them. It's love and action and its gaining traction This beauty is beyond the surface. She reminds me of my purpose when I feel worthlessness. Its like good love, my sisterhood.”

MONRO: You worked with the choreographer Alex Green, referencing the work of 1970s postmodern choreographers Trisha Brown, Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer. Can you say how you incorporated their approach to dance as a visual manifestation of stability and strength through focusing on the subtlety of physical support?

BURGESS: I am very inspired by choreographers from the 1970s. If I could go back to one time it would be 1970s New York! Trisha Brown, Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer were all doing different things, but generally questioning traditional balletic gestures and adopting more everyday gestures. With Trisha Brown, I took a lot of inspiration from her Leaning Duet piece as I often think the simple ideas are the best. This is a great example of that. For me, her choreography pieces are visual manifestations of the simplicity of human support. I wanted to include the three female dancers as AGL was started by three women. And I also wanted to highlight the difficulty of holding a position for a long time, to signify stillness as a symbol for strength. I am interested in creating moments of connection between women that relies on physical balance and support; this idea that if they were to let go they would fall. I also wanted this to show physical manifestations of support structures, of invisible reliance on one another, and to show that—even without knowing—we sometimes rely on the work of others. I think that collective sisterhood is so integral to gender equality as we have a duty and responsibility to hold each other up. To push and challenge one another. In my mind, it's using bodies to embody cultural messages. Distribution of weight is quite difficult: getting the balance right is hard! The simplest things require a lot. Focus and harmony are dependent upon everybody who is involved; giving and receiving the weight, the burden and the responsibility. This is what drew me to this concept. 

MONRO: It seems you always bring a personal element to the films you work on. Your recent film for Jo Malone Hope Blooms, for example, shines a light on the charities supported by the brand (Thrive and St Mungo’s) and their horticultural therapy programmes for people who are homeless, or struggling with their mental health in some way. How do you decide on your projects? 

BURGESS: Every project is different and has varied requirements, but there has to be a personal and emotional connection. The Jo Malone piece, that was amazing, as on a personal level, I am open about having been in therapy for most of my adult life, and have benefited from being privileged enough to spend that time and energy on myself. I trained in Applied Theatre and worked in a number of community spaces; using art for social change. That is my background and I still host workshops in an adolescent psychiatric unit to support young people who are either in or out patients struggling with mental health issues. My work aims to have a positive interaction that communicates a positive experience.

film still from Hope Blooms for Jo Malone

film still from Hope Blooms for Jo Malone

film still from Hope Blooms for Jo Malone

film still from Hope Blooms for Jo Malone

film still from Hope Blooms for Jo Malone

MONRO: A number of your films have been shot in 16mm including High Snobiety X Gucci, Nowness X AGL and Hope Blooms for Jo Malone. What draws you to the medium? 

BURGESS: Whenever I can, I shoot on film. I would say I am leaning more and more towards just working with the medium. I am drawn to film’s imperfections, its risks, uncertainty, and spontaneity. Also, there is a tactility to the physical process that excites me. My uncle ran a photographic shop so everyone who needed film developed would go to Quick Snaps. When I was a teenager and learning about cameras—I got an SLR from him and I would take pictures of my friends/landscape—every Saturday I would drop off and pick up a roll of film. That physical exchange and process was special. Respecting the process and the time that goes into it, the physical labor—that is powerful. There is also an element of nostalgia. I will always have that connection to film as part of my history and love of cinema and photography: the physical imagery.

film still for Gucci x The North Face

film still for Gucci x The North Face

film still for Gucci x The North Face

film still for Gucci x The North Face

film still for Gucci x The North Face

film still for Gucci x The North Face

film still for Gucci x The North Face

film still for Gucci x The North Face

A Voyage Into Sight, Sound and Surf: An Interview Of Filmmaker Chris Gentile

Interview by Agathe Pinard

Self Discovery for Social Survival is the surf/music feature film born from the collaboration of Chris Gentile from New York-based surf brand Pilgrim Surf + Supply and Keith Abrahmsson from the record label Mexican Summer. Together they started this ambitious project to connect surf, sound and sight and make a film that would satisfy most senses. World-renowned surfers including Stephanie Gilmore, Ryan Burch, Creed McTaggart and Ellis Ericson joined musicians Allah-Las, Peaking Lights, Connan Mockasin and MGMT ’s Andrew VanWyngarden on this surf journey starting from a secret spot in Mexico, to the southern atolls of the Maldive Islands, and ending in the cold waters of Iceland. The film is narrated by a man who is often referenced as the godfather of American avant-garde, the late Jonas Mekas. I had the chance to talk to the artist, photographer and film director Chris Gentile about the making of his first feature-length film, bringing together artists and surfers, and working with Jonas Mekas.

AGATHE PINARD: I wanted to start by asking about the meaning behind the title, Self Discovery for Social Survival, can you explain it?

CHRIS GENTILE: When we started to conceptualize the film, myself and Keith Abrahamsson from Mexican Summer, we were thinking a lot about music and its relationship to surfing. Surfing is this activity, this pursuit that people engage in and that kind of helps people detach from what they’re do day-to-day, give them some contemplative time to sort of go inward and we were trying to come up with this name, and along the way I came across an old book that was written for climbing, for people who would free climb and climb up mountains. It was basically a book that gave people a pathway to overcome fear. The book was titled Self Discovery for Social Survival. Keith and I both felt like that really resonated with the spirit of what this film was about. Surfers are constantly looking for that open and free space to have a moment in nature, where two forces are meeting each other and the surfers are in the space where the energy that’s coming from nature is dying and being born at the same time. We felt like this title had a lot of metaphoric possibilities and decided to go for it. It’s a mouthful, it’s a big title.

PINARD: This is an ambitious project that mixes surfing, music and animation done by the in house designer of Mexican Summer…

GENTILE: Yes, Bailey Elder but also Robert Beatty, who’s an independent artist and illustrator.

PINARD: How did the idea/project come together ?

It was evolving the whole time we were making the film, it was a very open-ended and experimental process. The one thing that I really wanted to maintain was an open-endedness with everybody involved. So there are multiple points of influence that went into the filmmaking. I didn’t give the surfers any directions while they surfed. We travelled together, we picked these particular places, and they were reacting to the waves that were there for a two-week period of time, and the cinematographers were reacting to the way the surfers were surfing, positioning themselves to get the shot that felt right. I really left a lot of that control up to them. The musicians who were involved were on these trips and they were in the water and surfing the same waves that the professional surfers we travelled with were surfing. They have a first experience and perspective on what was going on. The idea was to let them go back into the studio and have complete creative freedom over the music that they wrote in reaction.

PINARD: What about the animation?

GENTILE: When that came into play, we showed a rough cut to Bailey and Robert. Then Keith Abrahamsson picked a couple of songs that he felt were appropriate to transition from one location like Mexico to the Maldives. To put a song and an animation that would kind of be like a mental palette cleanser, Keith came up with these two fantastic songs. One was an archival song from the seventies, “Void Spirit,” and the other one was a song that was made by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma for the film. Jefre isn’t a surfer, he wasn’t on the trip but he made these beautiful compositions inspired by the idea of being under water, being under the ocean. So, those tracks were given to Bailey and Robert along with the access to this footage, and they reacted and created these animations. Everything was very independent to one another, every aspect of the film. I kind of kept everything on track and helped people when they need my help, but really it was exercise––relinquishing ego and control, and letting everybody’s influence come in and affect the overall project.

PINARD: That’s funny, last week I interviewed Connan Mockasin and we talked about the trip he made to Iceland for the movie, and how he was impressed at the beginning to be around these professional surfers like Stephanie Gilmore who’s a seven-time world champion.

GENTILE: One of the things that I had to do was to think deeply about the personalities that we were going to introduce to one another on these adventures because most of the people didn’t know each other. And taking a surf trip, you don’t know what you’re going to get. There’s no guarantee that the waves are going to be good, or that the weather is going to be good, or a tire may go flat. You may miss opportunities or you may get opportunities that you would never expect. When we went on these trips I had to think about how the group would feel and I was just going off my own instincts and my own guts. The trip to Iceland was really special because it was a group of really different people. They all had a sincere admiration and appreciation for one another. Everyone became fast friends. Iceland was interesting because we were traveling all over that country chasing these storms and these waves. Sometimes getting them and sometimes missing them, but we spent so much time in these vans just traveling across this incredible landscape. Everyone got a lot of time to know each other, more so than on the other trips because on the other trips it was a lot more surfing, people were getting tired, it was different. Iceland was the one where I think the actual chase for the waves was the beauty in that trip, more so than the wave riding.

PINARD: For the movie you took some surfers and went on a trip to Mexico, the Maldives and Iceland, which one was your favorite ?

GENTILE: That’s a great question. I mean, I’ve been to that spot in Mexico so many times and it’s one of my favorite places on the planet. I loved the opportunity to go down there with that group of people, but I have to say the Maldives was really unique and special, because we had this group of Australian surfers together that were kind of like a brotherhood. That trip, we were on a boat, the whole entire time, on an old, old boat. It travels really slowly, had a lot of character and a great captain and a great crew. It was not posh by any means, it was kind of a busted boat. But it was so fun because everybody was just excited to be around each other, find waves, fish. The kind of boredom that you experience on these boats, these guys were wild and doing the most hilarious stuff. Some of it we couldn’t put in the movie it was crazy, drunken backflips off of the boat completely nude at like 3 o’clock in the morning. It was incredible, very memorable.

PINARD: The film is narrated by the late, legendary Jonas Mekas, it might have been the last project he worked on...

GENTILE: I know that Jonas filmed his life every day, so I’m sure that that footage is truly his last work. On this project we were so fortunate to have him agree to come and narrate. The words are Jamie Brisick and Jonas read them. It was so special to get to meet him and experience his humility and his generosity, it was fantastic. If it weren’t for Jonas, I don’t think we could have made a film like this. He’s had so much influence on me as a young artist throughout my life. He gave us, me and the rest of the people at Mexican Summer, everyone, he truly gave us the license to make the film. So, to have him narrate it was an honor, it was so special.

PINARD: How did you get him to work on the project?

GENTILE: Keith Abrahamsson is really responsible for that. Keith presented him with this idea and had already been working with Jonas on a couple of other things, helping him with his archives. They had a working relationship together. Keith asked him if he would be up for narrating the film, and explained to him what it was, and I think it was so strange that he thought it was worth doing. It wasn’t very difficult. He got in a recording studio with him, drank a couple glasses of wine, and I think in one or two takes he nailed the narration. It was great.

PINARD: The movie will premiere in LA this Saturday, are you excited? How do you feel about it ?

GENTILE: I’m a little nervous, I’ve never directed a film before. I’ve made a lot of short films, experimental films, but nothing that’s feature-length, and at this scale, and this level of production. I’m so grateful to have the experience. I’ve learned a lot from it. I’m really excited to see it in front of an audience, see the reaction, see the bands perform live to it, it’s going to be so special.

Self Discovery For Social Survival will premiere in Los Angeles this Saturday June 15 at The Palace Theatre with a live score by Connan Mockasin, Andrew VanWyngarden of MGMT and Allah-Las

The film is out digitally on June 18 and available to pre-order now at https://geni.us/SDSS .

The Thrill Without The Tropes: An Interview Of Screenwriter Isa Mazzei & Actor Madeline Brewer On The Occasion Of Cam's Premiere On Netflix

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text by Summer Bowie

portraits by Remy Holwick

film stills courtesy of Divide/Conquer

For anyone who has painstakingly worked to build and curate their Instagram page, only to have it disabled unexpectedly, you know just how devastating the loss can be. For those whose accounts have been hacked, the consequences can be much worse. Thus is the case for Alice (played by Madeline Brewer), a young and ambitious camgirl on the rise, who is relentlessly creating new shows and characters to improve her ranking on freegirls.live, a fictional camming site, designed and created specifically for the film. When Alice’s account is hacked and hijacked by someone with an uncanny resemblance, she is forced to outwit her doppelgänger while watching her own identity, both online and irl, degrade rapidly. Aside from the psychic thrill that the narrative provides, this film offers a refreshing subversion to the standard tropes that come from the sexy, horror genre. From the ways that sex work is represented in the film, to the ways that the screenwriter, Isa Mazzei and director, Daniel Goldhaber challenge the standard director-authorship, this film provides a wealth of new templates to consider that are seemingly radical, yet unsurprisingly, quite logical. In Mazzei and Goldhaber’s Cam, the hyper-indulgent and semi-private world of camming is given life in a way that is instantly translatable by the genre. A surreal, thrill ride that seeps into your unconscious mind and humanizes the very real people that hitherto have been unjustly stigmatized by the film and media industry at large.

SUMMER BOWIE: Isa, you wrote a film that is in many ways inspired by your own experience as a camgirl, but you chose to write a fictional, horror narrative. What drew you to the genre for this project?

ISA MAZZEI: First, I love genre, so that makes sense (laughs). But also, I felt like it was really important for me to bring audiences inside Alice’s experiences...and I think that genre is a really great tool for sharing subversive ideas in a way that’s really commercial and digestible. So to have an audience empathize with a sex worker and have them rooting for her to return to sex work… while there’s also so much adrenaline, and so much color, and so much action, and you’re on the edge of your seat –– I feel like that was the most effective way that I knew how to really bring audiences into that.

BOWIE: It seems the more horrific the daily news cycle becomes, the more obsessed we as a society become with horror films. What do we find so cathartic about it, and do we ever really exorcise the demons?

MAZZEI: I feel like horror can be really cathartic – absolutely – and I also think horror can be a way to communicate important ideas while still feeling like escapism, and that’s what I think is so cool about it. I don’t think anyone watches Cam and walks out going “Wow, I just watched something really political, and I just watched something really subversive.” I think those things happen on a subconscious level. I think that in a literal sense, Cam is a really fun, exciting movie that brings you into this really colorful, thrilling world for ninety minutes...and the work that it does that I think is really important is kind of on a more subconscious level than that. I think all horror can be used that way, and I think a lot of genre films do that work, and I think that’s why I love them so much. Because again, they’re kind of this way where you feel like you’re escaping from the real world, you feel like you’re in the fantasy space that is very cathartic, full of adrenaline...but actually they can communicate some really important ideas.

Screenwriter, Isa Mazzei shot by Remy Holwick

Screenwriter, Isa Mazzei shot by Remy Holwick

Screenwriter, Isa Mazzei shot by Remy Holwick

BOWIE: And there’s something really nice about this film and it’s approach to the genre, because I feel like horror in particular has a very rich, misogynist history, and to approach it from this perspective where you’re telling the story of a woman that is not a damsel in distress being chased by a monster is a really nice way to approach the genre.

MAZZEI: Thank you.

MADELINE BREWER: I think that’s what I found so refreshing about watching and doing the film. I’m a big slasher fan, but every situation in a slasher movie is like a young woman...with her boobs hanging out unnecessarily being chased by a much larger man, and that whole visual is just so tired to me now that I have a movie like Cam in my life. There are other ways to tell stories about women in a horror genre without that thing where the ‘slut’ always dies first. This movie still gives you the thrill without any of the tropes.

BOWIE: Madeline, how did you get a hold of the script, and did you initially see yourself playing the role, because I know a lot of reps won’t even show actors a script like this?

BREWER: Yeah, I talked to Danny and Isa about how there were some difficulties with them getting the script out, because not only actors, but actors reps have to be on board with the whole idea. My manager had said something to me like, “Hey, I have this script..I don’t know..it’s about a camgirl. Just have a look, see what you feel.” I read it and I immediately was frightened of it, because I was just like...I don’t know if I can do justice to a story like this, playing three characters. But I was stoked to play a camgirl.

BOWIE: The role demands a certain vulnerability and I understand that the on-set crew was predominantly female. How would you say that affected the vibe on set?

BREWER: Oh my god, we could not have done this I don’t think––I know personally, and I know plenty of actors that would back me up––that in this kind of situation, where you are physically and emotionally vulnerable, where you are literally and figuratively naked, you have to be in a safe environment, in which you are free to explore and express, and take yourself to another level. I’ve been on sets where women have felt uncomfortable because some random...I don’t know...crew member ogled them in a way that maybe would make them feel uncomfortable. I think that whole situation was just a non-factor for me because there were so many women, and I feel comfortable around women. But also the fact that there was a crew that….they knew what they were getting themselves into, they knew the story that they were telling, so if they weren’t supportive of that, then they would not have been there. It was already like a litmus test that everyone had passed. They were there and willing to be supportive of whatever had to go down to make this film, and a lot of that was me not being clothed.

BOWIE: Isa, you undoubtedly directed yourself in the past as a camgirl. What made you feel confident that Daniel Goldhaber was the right director to bring your script to life?

MAZZEI: I mean, a lot of things. The main thing is that he listens to me. And I think, you know, it’s easy to look back and say we’ve been collaborating for ten years, I trust him and his shot. You know, in the past I had hired him to shoot porn for me, and direct some videos that I had made, but at the end of the day the most important thing about him is that he listens to me. When I said, you know, “this is how she would hold her body in this scene,” it was kind of this three-way collaboration. She already knew those things, and I knew those things, and to have a director that would just kind of say, “Okay, I trust you and I’m not going to force anything onto the scene or onto the character that you’re telling me is not real or valid.” From day one of collaborating on the script, Danny always deferred to my judgement calls, especially on representation of the female body and performative femininity, and performative sexuality; all of those.

BOWIE: And the two of you share equal credit for the film. Was this a decision that the two of you made from the beginning, or did it happen somewhere along the way?

MAZZEI: That happened along the way. Initially, I was just writing it and he was going to direct it. But it became pretty clear in the beginning of the collaboration that we were building the story together, we were building the world together. We were discussing things like how we were going to shoot scenes while I was still writing them, and while we were still workshopping them. I had a lot of opinions and insight on the actors that I wanted, and the crew that we wanted, and what kind of DP I wanted, and how we wanted to include as many women as possible on set, and all of these decisions. So, it became pretty clear that it was something we were making together. We always like to say it’s like 100% his movie and 100% my movie, and there’s no way to tease apart the ownership more than that. It’s a shared vision, it’s been a shared vision, and that’s what we decided.

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BOWIE: The platform used in the film, freegirls.live, so closely resembles that of any social media platform with live capabilities that the basic act of camming is actual pretty familiar to most people. Madeline, did you have any personal experience with going live and juggling your attention between the performance and a live stream of comments and requests?

BREWER: The act of being live online and responding to a livestream of comments was totally new to me, I had never experienced anything like that before. I mean also what we were doing was synced up and I knew what they were going to say, and then the responses and everything. But it’s quick paced, very live and interactive and I watched a lot of cams in preparation in our pre-production time, and even during shoots to get kind of a refresher. I had a few camgirls that I liked in particular for their little quirks and nuances, so I watched them and how they interact. The things they say and what kind of inside jokes they have with their room, and their guys and all of that. It was something that I was totally unfamiliar with in that aspect, but what I was familiar with was that kind of performative identity that we all have online, and that feeling of always showing your best self, and the most ‘attractive,’ for lack of a better word, part of you to your internet following. The more time I spend on the internet, the more I learn about it. For example, someone I know who knows Kim Kardashian; all of her candid shots are completely staged. Everything she does is a business, and it’s all so perfectly cultivated and curated. This film in general has made me look a lot more at how I present myself online, and even whatever level of transparency I think I do have. I’ll never be totally transparent because the only people I reserve that for are my mother and my closest friends.

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BOWIE: I read that Pink Narcissus was a major inspiration for the set of Alice’s room. That film has such a great tension between intimate vulnerability and performative indulgence. It’s more peep show than porn. Why have we seen so many films about strippers, porn stars and prostitutes, but never anything about peep shows or camming? Is it just too gray an area?

MAZZEI: One of the draws of camming in general is that there is this gray area between: Are they a performer? Or are you actually getting to know the real person? There’s definitely this line that a lot of performers walk, where a lot of them don’t say, “This is my cam room,” they’ll say “This is my bedroom.” And maybe it will be their real bedroom. I worked out of my real bedroom for a long time before I built my own “pink” room that I had. There’s an appeal to that, because unlike a stripper, where you know you’re getting a performance, you know that you’re at their place of work...when you’re watching a camgirl, there is this blurring of a fantasy where you feel exactly that – you feel like maybe you’re seeing into their real life a little bit. I would often work six to eight hour shifts. I would put dinner on, I would drink coffee, I would be getting up to go to the bathroom...my roommate’s dog would wander through on my camera feed. There’s a level of reality to it that I think is really appealing, and that builds this level of personal intimacy. This is often found in any type of sex work but is especially highlighted in camming. So, for the Pink Room, we drew a lot of inspiration from that, and for me it was just important to build a space where we could not only show that Alice has a curated space that she works from – this kind of fever dream fantasy space – but also to kind of contrast this space to her real life. Because what I found when I was working, and what sex workers are often not credited with enough, is how much they dedicate their craft...how calculated and dedicated they can be. So Alice has this space that is intensely curated, very much thought out and decorated with all of her props and all the things she might possibly need. Then she has her house – and her house is not even unpacked, it’s still in boxes, it’s messy, there’s takeout food. She is giving everything to this space and, as I had mentioned, this craft. And that’s a side of sex work that I wanted to show, and I wanted to be really clear in this visual juxtaposition of this really curated space and then this kind of sloppy, still expensive, but not quite so deliberate space that she exists in outside of her work.

BOWIE: Madeline, as you were following several camgirls, what were the characters that you were drawn to? What was it about a specific camgirl? Can you give an example of one that you felt was really honing the craft?

BREWER: There were aspects of some camgirls that I would watch that would take on the persona of a little more girly...or there was a sweetness, or an innocence to them that I felt when I watched, which was totally part of an act…I believe...I don’t know, but there was a lot of quirkiness to them that I really enjoyed. It felt very human, and I guess that is what is attractive about cam – you feel like you’re watching a real person. I feel like as a performer myself - and for these camgirls as performers - we’re constantly highlighting things about our personalities that we want to make a little bit louder or exaggerating them, and then not including too much of the things we don’t want other people to see. It’s all there, it’s all underneath, whereas someone like the camgirls that I related to when I was playing Lola II, who were purely so enigmatic, and so unobtainable seemingly, that I wanted to model Lola II after, but without losing the fact that it’s based on Alice. I watched a lot of cam. I watched these girls day and night and just...the best word is “stole” from them what performative things they were putting in their shows that I felt fit Lola I or II, I just kind of stole them.

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BOWIE: And I’m sure that’s a process for other camgirls. Isa, maybe you can speak to that. Do other cam girls watch each other and get ideas? Is it a very interactive evolution?

MAZZEI: Oh absolutely! There’s varying degrees of that: There are girls who draw a lot of inspiration for each other, there are girls who accuse each other of stealing their show ideas. I know when I was working there was one girl who claimed that she had copyrighted a certain type of show and that if you performed it, you would get in trouble. There was also sharing ideas, or saying “I have this really cool idea for a show that you should do because you’re also really good at this type of thing,” and even collaboration between girls is really cool because there’s a lot of creativity there. Where I would work with a model, maybe a non-nude model, and I was definitely a very nude, very sexual model, and so us coming together creatively to figure out what type of show combines my style with her style, and how we highlight each other in the best way possible, while we maintain our own boundaries and the types of shows that we like to do. It’s a really interesting thing that happens and there’s so much sharing and inspiration there….there’s so many camgirls doing so many types of things, it’s quite mind blowing.

BOWIE: In addition to playing a wide range of characters, camgirls encounter an equally wide array of fans and benefactors. It seems that navigating this landscape safely and with dignity is almost an olympian feat. In your experience, Isa, do most camgirls have to learn how to do this alone, without any guidance?

MAZZEI: I think some girls are really integrated into cam girl communities and some girls aren’t. I think an important thing to remember is that every girl that’s camming is camming from a laptop or a computer somewhere in the world, so it’s not this thing when you’re in a sort of club with all your fellow dancers around you. It can be really isolating, it can be really hard. The only camgirls that I knew were the ones that I met through Twitter and I would fly to see them. I was recognized once in a coffee shop by another girl that cammed, who approached me and said, “Hey I cam too!” but that’s the only encounter in real life where I’ve actually met someone who lived in my hometown who did it. For the most part you’re pretty on your own, and I think that girls can choose to be really into these communities; they can choose to live together, they can choose to share and get advice from each other, and they can also choose to work in isolation and do their own thing. I think there’s a wide variety of that. When it comes to men, another misconception I think is that all the tippers on the site are middle-aged divorced men. I think if you look at just my fans, most of them were men...I had a couple women viewers, and a couple non-binary viewers. For the most part they were men but I also had a wide spectrum: I had married men, I had single men in their twenties, I had, like, fuckin’ hot men, I had men that worked in porn, men that were in their sixties or seventies who really didn’t know how to use the internet. You know, different levels of income, different levels of employment, interest, and I think that’s what’s cool about camming. A cam site is a place where all these different types of viewers in general can really find a person that they genuinely connect with.

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BOWIE: I want to talk about the casting a bit. For any Paul Thomas Anderson fan, Melora Walters is a god among actors, and in this film, the two of you have a very tenuous relationship that is delicate and subtle. What was it like to play her daughter?

BREWER: To be on set with her was such a gift in itself, and hanging out a little bit. She’s such a pro, but she’s also so open to conversation and to how we both interpreted our relationship. I know that on Isa and Danny’s side, she had a lot of feelings and input about the script and her lines.

MAZZEI: Yeah, I mean, Melora was awesome. She came in right away...I was very much writing a mother from the perspective of a daughter. What I was so grateful to Melora for was that she literally would come in every day and be like “I wrote this line. I rewrote this line. I rewrote this part. I want to see this happen.” And she really engaged with those discussions as a mother, saying things like, “I really sat down and thought about what it would be like if my daughter were doing cam and I found out this way.” I really was blown away by the perspective that she brought in and how well she did that, and how it was very natural for her to just embody this character. So, I found working with her a really cool process.

BOWIE: Madeline, you’ve now played several major roles in shows like Orange is the New Black, Black Mirror, and The Handmaid’s Tale. In the midst of the Brett Kavanaugh circus, we can see clearly why the dystopian present and women in bondage is currently such a recurring theme. What do you think of the protesters who have appeared in Washington in Handmaid costumes?

BREWER: The fact that the design that we wear every day when we go to work on this show–– we’re just actors and we work in Hollywood, and the fact that those designs that Ann Crabtree made from her heart and from her inspiration from Margaret Atwood’s book–– they’re being taken and used as a symbol of resistance, and there is truly no better life for them. It’s great that they’re on the show but the life of this symbol of women’s resistance and women’s refusal to sit down, and shut up, and let old white men make decisions for them; it’s the best possible life that your art can take on. A whole new life as a symbol.

BOWIE: Finally, Isa aside from the release of your first film on Netflix, your first book, CAMGIRL, is slated for release in November 2019. What can we expect from the book that wasn’t expressed in the film?

MAZZEI: I think that the book serves to work along with the film to kind of normalize and bring to light this subculture that not a lot of people are talking about. The book is really fun, it’s funny, it’s not at all like the movie. But I feel like often people come out of that film saying “Whoa, is that what it was really like, and where did the inspiration come from, what were your shows actually like?” So I think the book can serve to answer those questions, and also serve as another tool to reach more people, and raise people inside this world, and say that it’s just normal people doing this. It’s just another job that people have and it can be something that is not only a career but also really empowering to women. There’s this misconception that is predominantly held by men, but also can be held by women: that selling your body is somehow disempowering. Not to pretend that there aren’t victims. In the sex work industry there is often exploitation, but there is also a huge huge portion of the industry that is women reclaiming power over their bodies. I’ve been catcalled, I’ve been insulted, I’ve been abused, I’ve been sexually harassed for my entire life, and now I’m setting these boundaries, and I’m saying “Oh, you want to look at my body? You’re gonna pay me. You want to touch my body, you’re gonna pay me.” And that reclamation of power is an incredible tool for some women to heal and again, to build empires around themselves. So, I hope that the book can speak to that and just be another piece of the puzzle of trying to have people empathize with sex workers, look at sex workers a little differently, and I definitely think when they’re going in to vote, either to put someone in office or vote on legislation that does affect sex workers, they can look at it a little differently than they did before.

Cam is available now on Netflix.

Pennies From Heaven: An Interview Of French Actress Turned Film Director Maïwenn

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Maïwenn is little known in the United States, but in France, she has made an indelible mark on the world of cinema. Most Americans remember her as the seductive, singing alien, Diva Plavalaguna, in Luc Besson’s cult classic, The Fifth Element. However, her future acting and directing endeavors have indisputably eclipsed this small role she played as a teenager. As a director, she has a remarkably intuitive gift for creating masterful scenes that are powder kegs of emotion – with the fuse often lit during the first frame of the movie. The pacing, the chemistry and the fluidity – there is a preternatural authenticity. Over the past ten years she has directed four feature films and one short. Her most recent films Polisse (2011) and My King (2016) – the latter of which will be released next week in theaters – have won her critical acclaim and a multitude of highly coveted nominations. These accolades include, but are not limited to, the Palme d’Or, the César for best film, best director, and best screenplay. Her film Polisse won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Her latest film, My King, starring Vincent Cassel and Emmanuelle Bercot (who won best actress at Cannes for her role), is an incendiary, piercing tale of love and loss and disillusionment weaved together with tender humor and joie de vivre. We had the chance to sit down with the French Actress turned Director to ask her a few questions about her unconventional upbringing (which includes bringing fistfuls of collected change to see movies at her local cinematheque), the joys and the trials of being a movie director, and some of the techniques that she employs in her films.

Bowie: What do you think about the movie industry in Hollywood, as opposed to Paris?

Maïwenn: I don’t know if I’ve spent enough time here to form an opinion. In Paris we always hear about people in Hollywood being all about money and superficial things. And I’ve met really interesting people. Very free-spirited people. So, I don’t get all the things that people say, but maybe I haven’t spent enough time here.

Bowie: I read that you had wanted to be a standup comedian at some point, and there are a lot of hilarious moments in Mon Roi, despite its being a rather tragic film. Has humor always been a part of your craft?

Maïwenn: Not really. I did a show, but you couldn’t call it standup comedy. It was a show that was both funny and dramatic, but I was never trying to be a standup comedian. But all my movies are a little bit funny. I like to treat dramatic situations with funny dialogues. I like to mix both for balance. I have a passion for funny people, actually. If I could spend all my time with funny people—even if they’re silly—I would do it.

Bowie: They’re the best people.

Maïwenn: Not really, but they make me laugh.

[laughs]

Bowie: You’ve made several movies now, but I’ve read that you started writing Mon Roi about a decade ago. Why did it take so long to put it into motion?

Maïwenn: First of all, I was feeling much more than I do now. I needed to have many experiences before doing this film; as a woman, as a director, as a mother, as a friend—everything. And I think it’s really much easier to do a dramatic story first, then a love story. Because in a love story you have to start with happiness. I didn’t want to make a movie about love and have it stop when they’re fighting. I wanted it to stop when they love each other. And to do that, I needed a lot of experience. François Truffaut says—whatever, I don’t care about François Truffaut, but he says—“les gens heureux n’ont pas d’histoire” (happy people don’t have stories to tell). And it’s true. If it’s a couple, and they’re happy for two hours, I can’t make a movie out of that. So, each year I kept saying to myself, “I’m still not ready to do this movie.” I needed to create distance from my own life experience. I needed to be emotionally independent.

Bowie: Your lead character suffers a knee injury, and her therapist says that it might be the result of some kind of psychological trauma. Do you believe in this theory, and have you ever experienced such a thing?

Maïwenn: I would believe it if I had to. It depends on my mood, and it would depend on what kind of injury I got. But not especially. But the book exists and I was so inspired by the whole thing about the knee. The thing is that I spent 10 years writing the script and when I presented it to my writing partner, Etienne Comar, he said, “I don’t see the movie. I don’t see the point.” And then a few months later I told him I found an idea to help us move more quickly through the story. It’s about the knee, so we can jump back and forth throughout the ten years of the relationship. Otherwise, without the accident, I didn’t know how to explain why we were jumping ahead from time to time. And also, I like the idea of creating a puzzle, so that we start the movie with the knee and we don’t know where we’re going. Also, I wanted to give myself a challenge in the narrative writing process, and I wanted to make it difficult to understand, so that it’s a bit like a thriller.

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Bowie: Your movies are packed with emotion and life. Do you have a technique that you employ to imbue your films with that much drama?

Maïwenn: It’s the writing, the actors, the cinematography, etc. It’s really all connected, and maybe it’s just my personality. I like when it’s intense. I like when it’s excessive. And I like when the energy is a little bit close to hysterics. So, I try to transmit a sense of oppression to the actors. And I like when we laugh and we cry. I like when we don’t know what’s going to happen next.

Bowie: You’ve said that you know all of these characters in your personal life, but you don’t judge any of them. However, is there one character in the film that you relate to the most?

Maïwenn: Yeah, her [Tony]. Of course.

Bowie: And you mentioned that Vincent Cassel had a long list of critiques when he first read the screenplay. Can you give an example of one of his critiques?

Maïwenn: Well, he had a problem with the first part when they meet and they fall in love. He thought it was too sentimental; a chick flick.

Bowie: What do you get from directing that you can’t get from acting?

Maïwenn: Ah, good question. The love from the audience is really different. I feel love and respect from people in a very different way. As a director I feel they respect me intellectually, and as an actress they might like me or even love me, but it’s a lot more superficial. When you say you’re the director it’s like “Oh, okay. Respect.” But it makes sense because directing is so much more difficult.

Bowie: And you have to be more demanding of yourself as a director.

Maïwenn: You know, when you’re on the set as a director, every fifteen minutes someone comes to you to tell you about another problem that you have to deal with. That’s your whole life for ten weeks. It’s like, oh, we don’t have the set anymore, or the actor isn’t free anymore. So, you have to find another set in ten minutes. Or an actor is late, or he’s on drugs, what do we do? It’s always like this.

Bowie: That’s a lot to manage.

Maïwenn: And also to deal with the whole crew on the set, usually they’re all men, and usually they’re all older than me. So when you’re the boss and you have to tell a bunch of older men what to do, believe me, it’s not easy to deal with them. And it’s not just because I’m a director, it’s because I’m a woman.

Bowie: Yes, so even though women having been taking on executive positions and hiring men…

Maïwenn: It’s in the blood!

Bowie: Yeah, the psychological shift is still so difficult for them. Is it different promoting a movie in the U.S. vs. France?

Maïwenn: Yeah, it’s different because of the language, so it’s hard to find exact words in English. But also, the people don’t know me here. So, they don’t start the interview with any preconceived notions. In France I have such a bad reputation that everyone says, “Oh Maïwenn, she’s crazy. She’s hysterical. She’s crazy.” So, that when they arrive, they’re already shaking like, “ahh, what’s gonna happen?” So, I have to expend a lot of energy to tell them that I’m normal and nothing’s going to happen. But with journalists I’m not very generous, because I don’t like to analyze my work, and they think that I don’t analyze because I’m being lazy. And I keep saying that it’s not in my nature to do that. I don’t know why I’ve done this movie. I’ve just done it. And I think that all my answers are in the movie. I don’t want to dissect myself to find all the answers. So, sometimes I can give a very short answer and I can feel their frustration.

Bowie: In the film she was reading La Vie Devant Soi (The Life Before Us). What was the choice behind that?

Maïwenn: I like the title.

Bowie: It’s very appropriate for the film.

Maïwenn: And I like the book as well, but I chose it because of the title.

Bowie: And the watch that he gives her in the film, is that the watch you’re wearing?

Maïwenn: Yes! It’s my watch that I put in the movie because I like it so much.

Bowie: Yeah, it’s beautiful. What was your artistic background? Did you have artists in your family?

Maïwenn: Yeah, my mother, my father also kind of, but we were a really bohemian family. Very hard times. No money at all. They were cultured, but they didn’t know how to transmit it. They never really taught me how to communicate.

Bowie: And when did you discover film?

Maïwenn: My mother thinks it’s because of her, because she’s an intellectual. She’s a cinephile, but when I was living with her I couldn’t stand all the movies she was watching. It was so boring. So, I started watching movies on TV, and then I started ditching school and one day I went to a cinema in Paris and I had collected all the change in the house to buy a ticket. And the guy saw me counting all the coins to buy one ticket and he told me, “Starting now, any time you come to this cinema, you’re never gonna pay.” So, I started going every day and it changed my life. And I want so much to say thank you to him, but I don’t how to find his name. I asked a girl at the box office once and she said she didn’t know where he is, so I never got to thank him.

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Maïwenn's newest film, My King, opens in New York on August 12 and in Los Angeles on August 26. text and interview by Summer Bowie. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

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Activating The Vehicle Of Ascension: An Interview Of Filmmaker and Artist Floria Sigismondi

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text by Oliver Kupper

Floria Sigismondi’s work, like her music videos for Marilyn Manson, David Bowie or Leonard Cohen, is a perfect amalgamation of her unique upbringing. Spending her early years in the coastal town of Pescara, Italy and her formative years in the rough steel manufacturing town of Hamilton, Ontario – with opera singers for parents – Sigismondi has developed a unique aesthetic that blends classicism with a certain darkness that harkens 1970s Giallo films and the nightmarish tableau vivants of Joel Peter Witkin. As a music video director, Sigismondi brings a distinctive world to life with an unsettling and jarring pastiche of imagery that flickers as if each scene was shot with a camera perched on the wing of a hummingbird. Lately, though, her work has taken a turn for the meditative and ethereal, like her most recent music video for Rihanna’s track Sledgehammer – made for the newest Star Trek film. The music video, set in an otherworldly atmosphere, was the first ever made for IMAX. Sigismondi is also pushing further into the world of feature length filmmaking, which is a promising venture considering the success of her 2010 debut – a biopic about The Runaways starring Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning.  Currently, she is in the casting phase for the adaptation of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Francois Boucq’s comic series "Bouncer" – about an armed gunslinger and saloon bouncer seeking revenge in the vice infested Wild West. We got a chance to catch up with Sigismondi at the Chateau Marmont to chat about her upbringing, her work creating some of the most iconic music videos of the last two decades and her venture into feature length films. 

OLIVER KUPPER: Both of your parents are opera singers and music is a big part of your life. Was that your earliest introduction to music?

FLORIA SIGISMONDI: It was. I grew up on Tosca and Caruso and Maria Callas. That kind of music enters you. It’s not really just about what they’re saying, but it pulls on your heartstrings. And I fell in love with it by just hearing violin and piano and then kind of got into different kinds of music. But my parents...I always came across some strife because it was just amazing to them that these singers were having careers with this music, while I just thought they were singing the same old song and I wanted to experiment and try new things.

KUPPER: So were they very supportive when you started digging up things and discovered art?

SIGISMONDI: Yeah. My dad was a big Italian film buff and if they saw me scribble on a piece of paper they’d say it was art and that I was going to become an artist. I realized that they were the black sheep of their families and I guess that’s why they gravitated toward each other.

OLIVER KUPPER: So you knew you were an artist at an early age or that art was somehow part of your identity?

SIGISMONDI: I always did.

KUPPER: And you were mainly drawing?

SIGISMONDI: Yeah. Seeing just the tools like a little paintbrush or a professional sketching pencil got me really excited. It was this feeling almost like butterflies fluttering inside your body, and I just knew that it was what made me happy--that spirit. I think because my first language was Italian and I was kind of learning English in school, I really gravitated toward that as my means of communication. I was by myself and wanted to discover who I was by making art.

KUPPER: What was the culture like when you were growing up?

SIGISMONDI: It was rough. I lived in Hamilton, which is outside of Toronto. I was two when we immigrated [from Italy]. There were more steel factories per capita than I think in all of North America. It was a really tough town so there’d be fights at every party, every weekend. If you stared at somebody for more than 2.5 seconds they’d ask what’s your problem ­– it was that kind of thing, even as a young girl. So it was very tough. But then I’d go home and it’d be like little Italy. We’d be making pasta and singing, my mother would be sewing at two o’clock in the morning making costumes, and I’d be watching Westerns with my dad. [laughs] So it was two completely different worlds.

KUPPER: So, Hamilton was very tough.  

SIGISMONDI: Yeah it’s a very special place. I used to ride motorcycles and I remember I had a tiny baby Triumph. Loved my little English bike! It would always break down, though, so I was tired of it and was going to get a Harley – of course it had to be one of the biggest Harleys you could get, but I bought it off of a guy who was not happy he was selling it to a woman.

KUPPER: And photography is something that you really gravitated toward and you went into the direction of fashion photography, right? 

SIGISMONDI: I actually did music and fashion. The thing was, I was at school and did my four years. It was the last year and I had to pick an elective and I kind of thought, ‘okay I’ll try this.’ And I remember this roll of film just turned out blank because I didn’t even know how to expose it. But there was one picture that turned out kind of like a painting. I remember it being over exposed and having super bright colors. I was just thinking, ‘what the fuck did I do’? [laughs] So I think I stumbled into photography in a more impressionistic way where I didn’t see it as documenting things but more for asking ‘how can I use this a tool?’

KUPPER: And your approach to start making music videos…was that something that you knew you wanted to do or you thought about doing then?

SIGISMONDI: Well, it’s funny, I didn’t know that, but I read an interview when I was just taking photographs, and I was saying that I wanted to make film back then. So I guess there was something attractive to it. I grew up watching Fellini films, Pasolini, the Italian Spaghetti Westerns. And I remember watching as a kid and always asking things like, “how did they get that?” I’d always imagine what was behind the scene of getting that shot. I guess I knew sort of subconsciously about the creation of it as an art form. And when I do finish work I rarely look at it. So I think for me it’s more about the process, what you learn as you’re watching things.

KUPPER: In terms of inspirations, people throw around Joel-Peter Witkin or other artists. How would you describe your aesthetic? Because it is really unique to you…

SIGISMONDI: Obviously I gravitated to likeminded people who view the world in the same way as I do, seeing beauty in maybe the ugly or beauty in unexpected places. Also, the combination of two extremes (like in the way that I grew up with the steel-factory-rough-thing mashed together with the high art), so I kind of gravitated toward artists like that. But it’s been a long time since I’ve actually referenced anybody. For me it was more of like, ‘Wow, that person is doing what they love to do, no matter how crazy it is.’

KUPPER: And what was the connection with Brion Gysin, who made the Dream Machine?

SIGISMONDI: Oh yeah! He had this Dream Machine, that’s right. I did an interview for the documentary. I think there may have been a prior connection. He was in Toronto so maybe he’s Canadian.

KUPPER: He inspired a lot of people not only when he and William Burrough’s first developed it, but there’s weird connections between it and Kurt Cobain and stuff like that. So I was curious if there was some kind of connection between that and not just the aesthetic of your work, but also the idea of these sort of dreamlike images.

SIGISMONDI: Let’s just put it out on the table that dreams are more fun. That dimension is more fun than ours where we have to brush our teeth, this disease, that disease. There’s a lot of things we have to do that won’t allow us to completely go and daydream into different worlds. So for me it’s kind of what most excites me about life. And then you can extract that and make it into something physical to share with people.

KUPPER: Does any of your work come directly from dreams that you’ve had?

SIGISMONDI: Yeah, especially when I see them in detail. Sometimes they’re more vague and sometimes I can see the hairs almost coming out of the skin.

KUPPER: When you come up with a concept for a music video like the iconic one you made for [Marilyn] Manson, does the idea come to you right away? Or do you have to listen to the music?

SIGISMONDI: I have to listen to the music, because music to me sort of puts me in a trance. I have to listen to it so much that it actually has no form and then images starts to come up. So it’s kind of there and I’m not paying much attention to it, and I think that that’s when you kind of slip through the gap of this ‘other.’ And that’s what I used to do, I used to do a lot more sleep deprivation or listen to it when I was really tired at night, when you’re not worried about the stress of the day. It was more about a meditative or pre-meditative state whereas now things come to me while I'm walking or talking. I don’t have to put myself in those places.

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KUPPER: Do you write things down or do you keep them in something like a memory bank?

SIGISMONDI: Scared of that, but yeah. I do write them down and I have so many notebooks scattered all over the house that it’s crazy for me to find anything. [laughs] I’ve actually had to go through them and put stickies on them, because one project can be in ten different notebooks. So it kind of drives me crazy and I don’t know how to organize myself. Because when you have that inspiration you have to write it down.

KUPPER: What do you notice is the biggest difference in the music videos made now versus twenty years ago?

SIGISMONDI: I don’t watch them.

KUPPER: So did they become less interesting to even engage with at all?

SIGISMONDI: I think our culture was a lot simpler back then, you know what I mean? We didn’t have all this other stuff to analyze. So you did it because you were on the fringe, or there was a real kind of just bubbling into the mainstream, but you still felt it was yours to be a part of, you know? Whereas at least for me, now you really have to search. And so you have to be particular with your time and ask, ‘Do I want to create?’ or ‘Do I want to search?’ And I don’t watch television and I haven’t had one for many years. I finally got one just to watch Netflix but I don’t watch regular television.

KUPPER: There is an art form to making music videos, it’s filmmaking. In a condensed form.

SIGISMONDI: Yeah, for me it was always important to introduce something new in every section or in a fluid way. For me, the thing with a song in a music video is that if you put it all in the first minute then you’ve seen it.

KUPPER: And you made a feature. Was it daunting to go into making a feature film? Was it a completely different experience?

SIGISMONDI: It was so daunting because I was told that a film of that size would’ve been seven weeks, and I had like four or something ridiculous. I didn’t know and that even seemed like a long time to me, but you just don’t get through it. You meet your car guy or whatever person once, and can’t think about it even if it seems like the wrong guy for the scene. So that part of it was so different and crazy. I remember when the shoot started, I went ‘Oh my god,’ because the shooting of it was relaxing even though I was moving locations every day, and even if I didn’t get what I needed to get, I couldn’t go back. So I had to move very quickly. It was nuts.

KUPPER: I want to talk about the music video you made for David Bowie, starring Tilda Swinton, which sort of played with that idea of celebrity. How do you feel about those themes regarding celebrity?

SIGISMONDI: It’s not a concept that comes up, but it’s a strange way to live. I don’t think it’s natural to have that much attention and that we’re built for it. It’s a desire that's kind of dreamlike. It’s a dream...it’s a fantasy.

KUPPER: How did you meet Bowie? How did that collaboration come about?

SIGISMONDI: After I did the Marilyn Manson music video, I guess he had seen that and wanted to meet me. I remember for our first meeting he kept me waiting for an hour. But he was so amazing and we ended up spending five hours talking about art, so it was so great. I remember he had some ideas that he wanted to do. Since they were coming from him I took them very seriously but didn’t know what to do with them. And then I remember getting this amazing message on my answering machine where he just went like, do your own thing or create your own thing. He was giving me permission to be the artist that I was or that he respected. So we met in an artist-to-artist way.

KUPPER: Which is a great way to connect.

 SIGISMONDI: He was just really supportive in the artistic process and taught me that this is all we have. I remember the record company not liking some cuts of Little Wonder and I told him, “Oh my god, they don’t like this. I don’t know what to do,” and he just laughed, saying, “You don’t listen to them!” Because if he had, he’d be manufactured art. So then it became so exciting for me to think that all I had to do was come up with weird images and I could actually live in the world and have fun like that.

KUPPER: Are there any artists that you want to work with in any sphere of music videos?

SIGISMONDI: There are three new artists that I was thinking were so interesting. My mind right now is going more to features. I’m working on a movie with Alejandro Jodorowsky, which I know you read about that.

KUPPER: Yeah, I did. That’s so exciting!

SIGISMONDI: He wrote it and it’s based on his comic book series. It’s got all the elements but it’s a linear story that follows the life of this little boy who watches his parents get brutally murdered and he goes out to search for revenge and finds out about his family and that everything is interconnected. So it’s very Shakespearean in scope.

KUPPER: What stage is that in right now?

SIGISMONDI: Casting.

KUPPER: And your current video that’s out now with Rihanna. How did that come about?

SIGISMONDI: Well we were looking for something to do and this one was very special because IMAX was involved and the film Star Trek was involved. So when Rihanna and her team approached me it was really intriguing to create this other world. It was very different to anything that I think she’d done before. But also what was so great about it too was that it’s a stand alone piece, it wasn’t about using footage from the film, so I was able to just take all the elements that I wanted and give her the power and create her as a new character in a way. So I created a mystical character living on this planet, just conjuring up all these powers and she’s able to move the elements like rocks and sand and then transform herself into the universe. So it has this transcendent theme of how I think that people have such a big power that they don’t use.

KUPPER: And you premiered it in IMAX right? It’s a much different experience than watching it online.  

SIGISMONDI: Yes it is. Quite immersive and if you actually watch it in the IMAX theatre, the sound is pretty incredible too. They took me through the regular sound, the old IMAX sound, and this new IMAX sound, and you’d think you could barely hear a difference, but it’s incredible how you could actually hear the sound going right through your clothing to inside your body. So we had to remix the song to the IMAX sound and sound effects.

KUPPER: Amazing. And right now you’re working on something for the show in Toronto?

SIGISMONDI: That is part of a show called Oblivion which has three artists. I got the square with Director X and he’s done titles like the Death of the Sun and mine’s about activating and transcendence - it’s a little bit witchy. It’s all about activating your vehicle of ascension.

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You can explore more of Floria Sigismondi's work on her website. Interview, text and photographs by Oliver Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

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Very Little Bad Vibes: An Interview With Cult Comedic Hero Tim Heidecker

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text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Most people know Tim Heidecker from his brilliant Adult Swim series ‘Tim & Eric’s Awesome Show, Great Job!’ and ‘Tim & Eric’s Bedtime Stories.’ While it’s easy to use colorful adjectives to describe his brand of humor, it’s even harder to define it. Whatever it is, he’s developed a massive cult following. He’s an everyman that blends a sort of slobbish machismo with the mind of a stoner philosopher, but there is also something sinister about his wit and irreverent spin on, well, everything. Like every great comedian, Heidecker doesn’t identify himself as one. His role in Rick Alverson’s 2012 film The Comedy proves Heidecker is a brilliant, natural actor with an ability to show a haunting, dispossessed vulnerability that encapsulates a very distinct ennui and disillusionment belonging to the comedown between youth and middle age. As he gets wiser, Heidecker exudes a certain suburban boredom – a boredom that he makes seem exciting in his new album In Glendale. It’s a true ode to the singer songwriters, like Warren Zevon, Harry Nilsson, and Randy Newman, who wrote about their surroundings and life with a beautiful banality. Because it’s Harry Nilsson or Zevon or Newman, it works, and just like that, Heidecker can pull it off too. I got a chance to chat with Heidecker about comedy, music, getting stabbed in the back and dream projects that haven’t materialized yet. 

OLIVER KUPPER: The new album is great, by the way. I really enjoyed it.

TIM HEIDECKER: Thank you. That’s a good place to start.

KUPPER: Yeah, compliments are a good place to start. This is your first somewhat earnest album, right?

HEIDECKER: Uh huh, whatever that means.

KUPPER: What’s it like writing songs versus writing comedy? Is there a different wavelength you need to be on?

HEIDECKER: I don’t know. Songwriting is a little more meditative. Obviously, it involves an instrument usually - singing, playing guitar, playing piano, noodling around, finding phrases and subject matter. It’s something that I’ve done for years as a hobby or a way of clearing my brain of other stuff. It can be spontaneous; you can be sitting in a car with other friends and start singing something catchy. Comedy is generally driven by a project. What are the ultimate goals of this? It involves a lot more people, a lot more collaboration. I’m very productive when I’m in collaboration with comedy. I don’t sit around and dream up amazing ideas all day long. It generally involves getting lunch or going on a road trip. It’s doing something where there’s a conversation with a buddy – Eric, Gregg [Turkington], or Doug [Lussenhop]. Someone I’m close with. Music is more singular.

KUPPER: Were you craving that singular, cathartic experience?

HEIDECKER: Not really. With this record, I had always written lots of music. Certain songs would end up in a folder on my computer. Like, I don’t really know what this is. It might not be appropriate for comedy. It’s not really funny; it’s sort of sincere. I was reluctant to share that publicly. But once the first couple of songs on the record starting coming out of me, I thought, there’s a theme here that kind of works. It might be nice to put a record out without it being couched in a joke or a character.

KUPPER: How did you team up with [Jonathan] Rado from Foxygen?

HEIDECKER: Through Chris Swanson, who runs Secretly Canadian. I had known him for a while. Those guys financed the movie that I was in, The Comedy. We were friendly. He was a big fan of our work. He knew I was doing music, and he nudged me to take a stab at making records in a more current or straightforward way. He was curious to see what I could do if I did something outside of parody, if I could be a pop music guy that was doing interesting stuff. Rado and I connected on very similar interests in music - 70s singer/songwriter stuff. I love talking about the process, how those guys got the sounds they got, and getting back to that straightforward songwriting. He just wanted to help and be involved.

KUPPER: He’s super talented. That band is really great. Who were some of the singer/songwriters at the top of that list that you would talk about?

HEIDECKER: For me, it’s Randy Newman, Warren Zevon, Harry Nilsson - the greats, the big ones. I’ve been really enjoying them for the past several years now.

KUPPER: I’m obsessed with Harry Nilsson. When you decided to go in and make this album, did you feel like you had enough songs? Did you throw yourself in the studio and see what you could come up with? Half and half?

HEIDECKER: The process by which this record was made may be interesting, maybe not. Half the songs were written in a period of a month or so. The other half were songs I had written over the years; they didn’t fit into any one category. I had my little home recording studio. I would try to build up the track. You know, not just me and the guitar, but drums, bass. It’s a fun way to work, to build tracks, and getting it to sound good, but never that good. I’m not that good at it. I made a demo version of the album at home. It was in the order of all the songs, with a couple extras. I took this home demo to Rado and his garage, and we started making the songs from scratch at his place. He’s such a great piano player and drummer. We recorded on tape, and we had four or five demos out of that. But they were still demos; they weren’t what we both wanted, which was really clean studio, major-label-sounding recordings. So we took those demos, and I gave them to my band that I play with live - City City. They learned the demos, and then we went into a real recording studio. In the course of a week, we laid everything down. Very quickly, because we knew all the sounds and what we wanted to sound like. We wanted the level of professionalism and the clean sheen that those 70s records had.

KUPPER: You work with a lot of musicians. It’s like a ten-piece band, right?

HEIDECKER: Yeah, there’s a ten-piece band that I put together. It’s mostly that band, City City, and a little horn section. It’s a little bit extravagant; there’s two background singers, two electric guitar players. I could probably shave that down if I needed to. But right now, everyone just gels. They all came in and brought their own talents to the record. I’m very grateful.

KUPPER: Do you think the audience for your music is different from your comedy audience? Your comedy following is big. Will the same people come out for your music, do you think?

HEIDECKER: For right now, a large percentage of my fans will find me through comedy. With this record, we’re trying to present it to the largest group of people possible. I think some people who are coming on board either didn’t know or didn’t care for my work, but they like the music. It’s not intended just for the fans; it’s intended for people who like the music. I get a lot of, “Oh, this Tim Heidecker record is actually pretty good.” They’re surprised. Some fans who have been following me a little closer aren’t surprised because they know that I am a big music lover and music maker. That early music might be sillier, but it has the same core qualities.

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"I don’t necessarily identify myself as a “comedian.” I do comedy, I do standup and sketch comedy. I make all kinds of stuff. But I don’t concern myself with what to call it or how I should be perceived...I think it’s unfortunate that we expect people to stay in their lanes."

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KUPPER: It’s interesting. Not a lot of comedians can bounce between these different mediums and be taken seriously. Especially when it comes to acting. Your role in The Comedy was a really serious role. There are certain actors, like Robin Williams, whose acting is so good that you don’t necessarily think of them as a comedian anymore. Do you ever think about the implications of being too serious?

HEIDECKER: It’s a thing that’s put on us by journalists and certain people that have perceptions of what people are supposed to do. It doesn’t affect my decision making when I decide to do something or not. I generally try to do something based on the desire to do it, whether or not I think it will have quality and be successful. I don’t necessarily identify myself as a “comedian.” I do comedy, I do standup and sketch comedy. I make all kinds of stuff. But I don’t concern myself with what to call it or how I should be perceived. If anything, it’s more interesting to have different facets and abilities. I think it’s unfortunate that we expect people to stay in their lanes. Actors, musicians, directors, whatever - most of us started out just wanting to make stuff, to do something creative. There was more of a push towards doing comedy, for me. But I still have interest in lots of stuff. As long as there’s a market for it, I want to pursue those things. I also understand that there is context. There’s a challenge when someone who is usually a country singer comes out with a rap album. It’s going to be hard. But some people can do it really well. I admire Steve Martin. He can be silly, very serious and intellectual, he can play music and go on tour. I just hope that you can place this record of mine in the context of my larger body of work and say, “This guy has ideas. He has an interest in expressing himself in different ways.”

KUPPER: There’s a lot of freedom in that. If you see yourself as an artist and not specifically in one lane, you can do anything, even if there’s not a market for it.

HEIDECKER: I want to have that reputation, that you don’t know exactly what to expect when I present something. It should, theoretically make you more interested in what I’m doing next.

KUPPER: You still maintain the cult comedian aura. Is that something that you try to hold onto, or is it a natural progression of you as an artist?

HEIDECKER: It’s all just been fun, playing with identity and the media, trying to create work that leaps the dimensions of television or linear video. It’s been more fun, for On Cinema, to let those characters have a life outside the show. This record, though, is really straight. There’s really not an angle for me to be anybody but myself. If there’s something stupid, like something from the Tim and Eric Show, the work speaks for itself. Let’s just party.

KUPPER: Do you feel like you get a lot of stupid questions? Do you like doing interviews?

HEIDECKER: It depends. It’s interesting to see the spectrum of people who are interested. Our publicist works very hard to get as much press as we can. My attitude has always been, do as much as you can. You never know when someone is going to read something out of the blue, and it turns into their favorite thing. But there are so many young people doing this who don’t seem interested. Like, I had a kid come to the Decker screening, and he ran out of questions for me in, like, a minute. I don’t know if this is the best career choice for you if you can’t think of any questions. He’s like, “Yeah, my editor wanted me to talk about Trump.” He asked me three questions about Trump, and then he got tongue-tied.

KUPPER: They want clickbait.

HEIDECKER: Yeah. But generally, if there’s someone like you, someone thoughtful and interesting, I think it’s pretty harmless. It helps me figure out what the hell I’m doing. You can make stuff, but you don’t really analyze it too much until you start talking to someone about it.

KUPPER: It’s interesting how that works. That’s why real criticism is important, too. People are too focused on clickbait, and they don’t think that the most interesting thing is to analyze the work and talk to the artist to find answers.

HEIDECKER: I think some criticism tends to be very quick, not thoughtful, not researched. The negative criticism I’ve gotten has usually come without a frame of reference to me or my work. It’s a very easy, “This is just Dad rock.” I’m insecure with that person, who doesn’t know the context. It’s safer and quicker to go with a buzzword that they just heard.

KUPPER: You’re premiering Decker next week?

HEIDECKER: Yes, Friday the 17th.

KUPPER: And you’re working with Gregg Turkington again, which is great. What’s that experience been like?

HEIDECKER: Gregg and I have known each other for about 10 years now. I was such a huge Hamburger fan. I roped him into doing our show. Our wives get together. We’ve got kids who are the same age. We just share a lot of common interests. Once we started doing this On Cinema thing, it seemed like we found this endless well of material that we could keep feeding and growing and developing. We established these two characters that are so fun to write for and behave as. It keeps entertaining us, this world. And it keeps getting bigger, because we keep adding fuel to it. Also, he’s just a nice guy. I’m so grateful to do this. On the TV show, we were able to elevate things a little bit. We were doing it as a full time thing. It was one of the most stress-free, joyful experiences. Everyone doing it loves it. It’s an easy thing to make. It’s so shitty. It’s not like you’re doing tons of takes and waiting for the perfect light. There are very little bad vibes in that environment. At my age, you want to be around that kind of energy as much as possible.

KUPPER: Especially in collaborations.

HEIDECKER: Yeah.

KUPPER: It’s been ten years since you had that famous interaction with your neighbor [where he stabbed you in the back]. Do you still think about that, or is it ancient history at this point?

HEIDECKER: Strangely, I’ve been thinking about it lately. Not to pat myself on the back (and not to be ironic), when that kid did that to me, I didn’t want to press charges. It felt like such a futile thing to do. He was 19 or 20 years old. He was on some insane drug. If he was going to go to jail for a significant amount of time, he would end up way worse. He’d be a bigger problem to the world. He ought to be given another shot. Those with white privilege are treated with more leniency, and that’s not fair, but it shouldn’t be, “Let’s throw this kid in a dark cell for the rest of his life.” It should be, how can we give disadvantaged kids better opportunities? We need to look at the prison system as not the answer to our problems. It’s a heavy thing. When you’re actually faced with the choice to punish somebody, it’s a hard thing to do. If you know anything, the prison system is designed to fail. It doesn’t make any sense.

KUPPER: You have to rehabilitate.

HEIDECKER: Yeah.

KUPPER: Do you have any dream projects that haven’t materialized yet?

HEIDECKER: We’re kind of doing it all. The more of an audience you have, the easier it is to do all these things. That’s the challenge, to get the word out, to get people to tune in. The futility of that is I know I don’t have a lot of power there. It either connects with a larger group of people, or it doesn’t. To answer your question, the next record I want to do, we want to bring in some of the guys that actually played on those old records who are still around. People like Jim Keltner, those guys who are still doing sessions and available. I would love to go in with Murderer’s Row and the people who made that, just to do it, because you can. I think that adds a whole other level.

KUPPER: I look forward to that, for sure.

[helicopter-like sound]

HEIDECKER: Cool. My helicopter is here, so I guess I got to go.

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Tim Heidecker's new album, In Glendale, is out now on Rado Records. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Photographs by Cara Robbins. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

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The War Back Home: An Interview with Creative Polymath Nina Ljeti

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Nina Ljeti is prolific. She is a writer, filmmaker, actress, and musician. Just a few of her many projects include: starring in films directed by and alongside James Franco; co-writing and co-directing the feature length film Memoria with Vladmir de Fontenay (which is out in theaters now); performing in her band, Nani; and shooting a biopic about Jerry Garcia. She has the creative output young artists have wet dreams about. But Nina Ljeti is prolific in another sense of the word. She is the daughter of Bosnian immigrants (who came to Canada at the start of the Bosnian Revolution) and a high school punk stoner; a film buff who loves Titanic and Coppola alike. Her richness isn't just in practice; it's in spirit and history as well. We got to ask Ljeti about memory, filmmaking, ghosts, and getting to play Patti Smith. Read it here.

Autre: You were born in Bosnia and Herzegovina just before the Bosnian War. Do you have any memories of that time? Did you grow up there? What was that like? 

Nina Ljeti: No. We left in 1992 when I was still a baby. We immigrated to Canada- my parents had never been there before and they didn't know the language. They were in a completely foreign setting, and they left everything they had and worked for to start a new life for me. I remember the daily struggle my parents dealt with just so we could eat and survive. And I remember them watching TV every night for any news of the war back home.

Autre: When did you know that you wanted to act and make films? Was it acting or filmmaking first? 

Ljeti: I started off wanting to be an actress/singer in high school, but I was also making films at the same time. I made my first movie when I was 14. They went hand-in-hand for me. As a kid, I was also writing a lot- poetry and short stories, mostly. I don't really act so much anymore- I'm primarily a director now. 

Autre: You've written and directed a number of films as well as acting, including co-writing and co-directing for Memoria. What's it like to be behind the camera? Do you prefer writing and directing to acting, or is it nice to be holistic in that way? 

Ljeti: I enjoy directing way more. The only time I really perform as an actress is if I'm collaborating on a project with James. My true passion is writing and telling stories- I love writing scripts and songs.  All I do in my spare time is read and write.  

Autre: What was it like co-directing and co-writing Memoria with Vladimir de Fontenay? 

Ljeti: I love Vlad. When we made Memoria he was much more experienced than I was as a director, so it was wonderful to learn from him and he was very supportive of me. He's my baguette. 

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Autre: Memoria seems like your classic bilungsroman - a teenage guy struggles to find meaning amongst friends and family that "just don't get him." Did you find this was your connection to the film as well? Did you empathize with Ivan? What is your coming-of-age story? 

Ljeti: I connect with Ivan a lot. I wrote the script and a lot of the characters in the film are based on kids I knew in high school. My coming-of-age story is pretty classic. I got bullied a lot. I liked punk and thrash. I was overly sensitive and always skipped class to hang out with kids who 'understood me better.' I wrote a lot in my diary and smoked pot everyday at lunch but still got the best grades. I was also really depressed and sad all the time but, who wasn't? 
Memoria also has a great deal to do with memory (hence, the title) - is elusiveness and subjectivity.

Autre: What connections do you see between memory and writing, or memory and filmmaking?  

Ljeti: As a writer and filmmaker,  I draw from my memories as the main source for my work.  I always notice that small details will change in how I remember something---- I think to keep the feeling I felt in that moment alive so I never forget (i'm talking about memories of love) and then this memory will replay in my head over and over even after I've used it (and this part is torture).  

Autre: You've worked with James Franco on Rebel, Memoria, and the upcoming film Zeroville. How did you two meet, and why do you think so work so well together? 

Ljeti: We met at NYU seven years ago. It's really rare to meet someone who shares your passion for creating and exploring. He's the only person I met who is as curious as I am. I think that's why we continue to work together- there's always something new to try. 

Autre: In Zeroville, you play Patti Smith. That's amazing. Did you do anything to try to get into her head? 

Ljeti: I was just performing on stage as her, so I really just tried to emanate her performance technique. This bit of study did help me a lot with performing in my band (that I sing and write the lyrics for).  

Autre: Zeroville deals with the ghosts of cinema, how they can haunt us despite their fictions and weave their magical thread into our daily lives. Have any films affected you in that way? 

Ljeti: Titanic. I watched it when I was 6 and it set a very unrealistic standard of love for me. Also Coppola's Dracula. I wish vampires were real. And I wish Disney movies were life. And that Marlon Brando could live forever.

Autre: Along that same vein, Hollywood can be kind of this ghostly, mythical place. Have you found that in your time in Los Angeles? 

Ljeti: No, I haven't found any ghosts in Los Angeles. All the ghosts I've seen are back in New York. That's where my heart is. 

Autre: What projects are you working on now? 

Ljeti: My next film is the biopic of Jerry Garcia, which I wrote and will be shooting this July. I also have a band called Nani, and we're going to be releasing our first EP sometime this year. 

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Memoria, written and directed by Nina Ljeti and Vladimir Fontenay,  is out now in select theaters. Text and interview by Keely Shinners. photographs by Kevin Hayeland. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

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The FOMO Is Real: An Interview With Photographer and Filmmaker Yulia Zinshtein

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Yulia Zinshtein is a photographer, filmmaker and poet living in New York City. In the FOMO (fear of missing out) generation, she paints a portrait of her friends through a sardonic lens that leaves the viewer wondering if she is poking fun or being completely serious. It's a deadpan type of humor that only the keen, or members of her generation, will understand. In her short film, entitled Girls Going Wild, inspired by early-naughts reality TV and late night infomercials, she brings to life what it means not to be the life of the party. She says, "Girls Going Wild is about searching for the best party. This video aims to show how awkward that search can be...and that the very process becomes the best party you could ever find." We got a chance to ask Zinshtein about her work and her new short film, which Autre has exclusively premiered. 

Autre: Where are you from and why were you in Miami?

Yulia Zinshtein: I was born in Philly and raised in Moscow. I shot the video while in Miami for Art Basel! It was my first time at that art fair and it really affected me, something about Basel brings out the worst in people! But Miami is the best, one of the most inspiring places for my work. 

Autre: Where did the inspiration for this short film come from?

Zinshtein: We had extreme FOMO the whole time we were at Art Basel...worse than general New York FOMO! Where was the “real” party at? Were we on the list? Could we sneak in? Are we having fun? Will there be free drinks? Am I cool enough? Do my parents love me?! The 13 year old inside me was inspired by the old school video camera...filming my friends doing nonsense and acting for the sake of it really brought up how it all started for me. 

Autre: This work has a reality tv feel to it, only it feels a lot more real. Was that your intention, and are you a fan of reality tv?

Zinshtein: Oh definitely! It's between Girls Gone Wild and The Real World. But the message is the exact opposite of what Girls Gone Wild represents: girls not getting wild enough! 
I actually find contemporary reality TV extremely boring, I can never get through an episode of the Kardashians (and I've tried many many times...like oysters, I never got a feel for it). I love watching old Real World episodes but mostly for aesthetic reasons.

Autre: In addition to your video work, you're also known for your photography and poetry. Which medium did you start with first, and where do you feel most comfortable?

Photography was my gateway drug into video work and poetry. I feel comfortable in all mediums, they trigger different satisfactions. However I am most confident in photography, because I am more educated in it and have been doing it longer.

What's next?

Next, I have a trip planned to a private ranch in south Texas, somewhere I've never been! I'm really excited to see the outcome. In the summer I'm planning to go to Moscow (my parents still live there) and make work about them and my old life. Mostly, I want an excuse to annoy my Mom by following her around with a camera! I can see her yelling at me already, it'll be great!

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Click here to watch Yulia Zinshtein's new short film Girls Going Wild. Visit Zinshtein's website to see her photography. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

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Portrait of A Young Filmmaker: An Interview With CAMGIRL Director Dana Boulos

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photo by Kevin Hayeland

Dana Boulos is the talented director behind a new short film, entitled Cam Girl, that Autre has premiered exclusively online. Written by Jesy Odio, Cam Girl explores the vague border between our private lives and our proposed private lives.  With the rise of adult webcam sites, where people can disrobe for a select viewing public in exchange for tips, Cam Girl is a prescient look at a humanity’s bifurcated persona; the erotic online persona and the persona of the girl who calls you up to tell you she just got her period, or the girl who calls you up to hang out. Cam Girl also reconnoiters our need to constantly communicate and digitally catalogue our lives. Autre caught up with Dana Boulos at home in Hollywood to ask a few questions about her inspirations, her love of film, her involvement in Petra Collins' all girl art collective Ardorous, and CAM GIRL, which can be viewed here. 

Autre: Where did you grow up and did you always know that you wanted to enter the creative fields? 

Dana Boulos: I grew up in Hampstead, London and moved to LA when I was 10 years old. As a child I wanted to be an artist. I knew I would fall into a creative field I just didn't know which one. 

Autre: Who were some artists that first inspired you? 

oulos: As a 5 year old I was obessed with Monet, I found his work so so soft and dreamy. I also look up to the works of Nadie Labaki, David Hamilton, Sarah Moon, Richard Avedon, and Larry Clark. 

Autre: You have a big love of fashion - where did this love come from?

Boulos: It definitely came from my Family, especially my grandma. She was a model in Lebanon in the 60s'. 

Autre: Can you talk a little bit about your production company?

oulos: I don't have a clothing label, but I do have a film production company called Cherry Runaway Films. My idea behind the Cherry Runaway Films is to also empower people into making films by discovering new up and coming directors, artists, and writers to produce their work. 

Autre: You are a part of an all girl art collective called Ardorous - how did that come about and is it still active?

oulos: Yes Petra Collins and I became friends over the internet in 2009. She was forming all girl collective of artists from all around the world and I was one of the first to be asked me to be apart of it. We were all excited to be apart of an all girl collective that shared the same interests in art and understood each other. I had never met any girls in my city in LA that were into the type of art I was making at the time. I had become best friend with some of the girls I had met in IRL when they were visiting in LA. At the time we didn't realize how big it would get online and how many people clicked on the site. We all got amazing opportunities working with big publishing houses and having art shows around the world. The Ardorous was just the beginning and definitely inspired a lot of female artists out there on producing work. I feel really honored to have been apart of it. 

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Autre: Cam Girl is your first foray into film, where did the idea for this short film come from?

​Boulos: I was at the right place at the right time. I had been hired by Oyster Magazine to photograph stills for a film they were doing a feature on and I had just met Jesy Odio who was working on set. She got my number called me the next day for a meeting she had just written her first short called CamGirl and wanted me to direct it. I read the script and instantly loved it.

Autre: What do you want young women to learn from watching cam girl - are there any defining messages?

Boulos: CAMGIRL​, written by Jesy Odio explores what goes on in front of a computer screen and how it differs from what goes on in our bedroom IRL. The way we type with strangers online is not exactly the same way we talk with our friends when we got out. Although our main character is alone in her room she never takes a break from being in touch with others especially the constant digital cataloguing. I want to see more Women young or old in the film industry. Before meeting Jesy, I was studying cinematography and knew I wanted to pursue film making for 2015 and thats exactly what I did. I'm a strong believer in the laws of attraction. Anything you set your mind to you can accomplish. 

Autre: What's next?​

Boulos: I'm currently working on my next film 'CRIMSON ROSE', which I've been working on the script with Jesy since the summer of 2015. I'm looking forward to be working with some amazing people on this film, I cant talk about what its going to be about but definitely look out for a killer sound track to the film as well as mini book. 

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You can watch CAM GIRL here. Stay up to date with Dana Boulos by visiting her website or following her on Instagram. Photographs by Kevin Hayeland. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

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For the Love of Gore: A Conversation With Teenage Filmmaker Kansas Bowling

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We met up with Kansas Bowling, the young, bright-eyed filmmaker who is about to release her first film – a “prehistoric slasher film” called B.C. Butcher – at Canter’s Deli in Los Angeles. It was the perfect setting for a late night nosh and chat about filmmaking; a not so unusual conversation among the famed booths of the Jewish deli where Bowling’s boyfriend, the iconic DJ and “Mayor of the Sunset Strip” Rodney Bingenheimer, has his own table. And it was at that table where we talked with Kansas about her upbringing in Los Angeles, her early fascination with low-grade horror films and B.C. Butcher, her first feature, which stars the likes of Kato Kaelin and Bingenheimer himself. The film is Bowling’s debut as a filmmaker and is being released today on the famed production and distribution company Troma’s digital streaming service. Troma is known for cult fare such as Toxic Avengers and Return to Nuke 'Em High. At seventeen, Bowling is in for a strange and wild ride with her cinematic pursuits, and being with Troma means that she is already in the right company. What you will learn in the following interview is that Bowling used a combination of production sources to fund B.C. Butcher, which include crowdfunding and a settlement from a car accident. Fate, it seems, stepped in at the right time. While other kids are gearing up for prom or college campus tours, Bowling is getting ready to “spend more money than she has ever spent in her entire life” to create a print of the film to project in movie theaters. In the following interview, you’ll understand that Kansas Bowling is surely a talent to watch.

Oliver Kupper: I want to talk about your upbringing. Did you grow up in Los Angeles?

Kansas Bowling: Yes. I was born in Beverly Hills. I lived in Hollywood, and then I moved to Topanga Canyon. I moved to Koreatown, then Mid-City, and then back to Hollywood. [Laughs.]

OK: Were your parents a part of the industry.

KB: No, not really. They did extra work, but all the kids do that. But not really. My mom works at Bloomingdale’s, and my dad works for the L.A. River.

OK: So there wasn’t really a film background. You jumped into it on your own?

KB: Yeah.

OK: You have a really interesting name. Were your parents artists or hippies?

KB: My dad’s a bit of a stoner. [Laughs.] They were in a popular grunge band in the 90s, when I was born. It was called Bottom 12. My mom was a backup singer, and my dad was a bass player. He used to get naked on stage.

OK: Was it based here?

KB: Yeah, it was based here. They didn’t have an album come out though. My dad has this big story about, “Oh, we could have made it!”

OK: Growing up, did you know you wanted to become a filmmaker?

KB: Pretty much always. Ever since I knew what a filmmaker was. Before that, I wanted to be a firefighter, but that didn’t happen. [Laughs.]

OK: And then film came along?

KB: Yeah. I was a really big fan of Quentin Tarantino, since I was 7 years old. My sister and I would play Kill Bill. We had fake samurai swords. I would always be Lucy Liu, and my sister would be Uma Thurman. We would film it and stuff.

OK: How did you get access to those movies? Not a lot of kids are able to see Tarantino movies when they’re that age.

KB: My parents didn’t really care what we watched. Sometimes, they would introduce movies to us. But a lot of the time, we would just find movies on our own. They didn’t really care. Especially when I was older, like a teenager, my parents had never heard of the movies I was watching. Therefore, they didn’t care what I was watching. I watched I Spit on your Grave when I was 13. They had no idea what that was. It has the most horrific rape scene of all time.

OK: Specifically, the horror film genre—gore, exploitation films—is that what you got interested in?

KB: I don’t necessarily just love exploitation films, but I love lower-budget films. I feel like they have the most heart. Not just horror films, but also American-International Beach Party movies, Annette Funicello. I don’t know, just weird sixties and seventies sex comedies. Doris Wishman, Diary of a Nudist. Stuff like that.

OK: Can you remember the first film you ever saw? Or the first film that made an impact on you?

KB: Probably Kill Bill. And then when Death Proof came out, I liked that even more. I saw it when it came out, and that’s when I found out about those kinds of movies. I started watching Troma movies shortly after that, when I was about 12.

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OK: And you started making films after that.

KB: I used to shoot little short films with my friends. It was fun. They were really silly. We’d have mini-premieres with all our parents. There were little red carpets we would set up, and we would take paparazzi photos. [Laughs.]

OK: And your parents were supportive of what you were doing?

KB: Of course. They were always really supportive.

OK: A lot of kids have no idea what they want to do. Or, their parents try to steer their kids into a different direction.

KB: They knew what I wanted to do, and they saw this passion and ambition that I had. They didn’t want to get in the way of anything.

OK: When you started making your first films, you started working with Super 8?

KB: I got a Super 8 camera when I was 13, for Christmas.

OK: Did you immediately know how to use it? Do you have any mentors that you started working with?

KB: It was pretty simple. My sister and I didn’t know about lighting at first. We shot a lot of things indoors at night that never turned out. [Laughs.] But we figured it out eventually.

OK: Let’s jump into the movie, “B.C. Butcher.” Where did that idea come from? That’s your first feature film, right?

KB: Yeah. Me and my friend, Kenzie Givens, wrote it when we were in high school, just because we were bored. I met her in high school because she opened up her locker, and she had a picture of Jack Nance from Eraserhead. I walked up behind her and said, “Oh my god, I love Jack Nance!” She screamed and fell over. [Laughs.] We became really good friends. The next day, we went to Cinefamily and saw the movie Possession together. She’s really in love with John Waters. I’m really in love with Roger Corman. So we decided to make a movie together. I said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we made something so cheap? All we would have to do is run around in a state park or something, with loin cloths. We could make a caveman movie.” And then she said, “Yeah, or a slasher movie.” Then we were both like, “Oh my god, a caveman slasher movie!” And then we just started writing it together. I was fifteen when we started writing it, and she was sixteen or seventeen.

OK: Did you make it during the summer or the school year?

KB: We graduated at the same time. I graduated my junior year, and she graduated her senior year. She went off to college, so she didn’t get to help me make it. But we said we were going to make it. I didn’t want her leaving to stop me, so I went ahead and made it.

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OK: Where did you get the funding for the film? Did you crowdsource it or find producers?

KB: I shot one scene to use on Indiegogo. I got the money for that one scene from insurance money from a car accident. It was such a minor car accident, so it was no big deal.

OK: So it was fate?

KB: Yeah, it was definitely fate. I did one scene and put it online for a crowdfunding thing. I didn’t really get my goal, because I was pretty naïve. I thought, “Oh, I’ll put it up, and people will give me ten grand.” But I got $1500. A lot of it was because people started writing articles about it. I went to Monsterpalooza, this horror movie convention, and I passed out flyers to everybody. I passed some out to the right people, and they wrote about it. Fangoria wrote an article about it. This website called Birth.Movies.Death did a big thing that brought a lot of money. It didn’t get me all the money that I needed, but it did get me a lot of exposure.

OK: It’s hard to get a movie made, even a low-budget film. Especially when you’re younger and people don’t know what’s going to come out of it.

KB: Yeah. After that, I still wanted to get the money from my original goal. It took me about eight more months to raise that money, getting jobs and stuff. But I love it.

OK: Your cast is really interesting, specifically Kato Kaelin. How did that come about?

KB: Rodney [Bingenheimer] introduced me to him. They go to IHOP together all the time.

OK: Were you aware of who he was in the nineties?

KB: Yeah, he’s Kato Kaelin. Rodney said one day, “You know who you should have in your movie? Kato Kaelin. Here’s his phone number.” I called and said, “Hey, Kato, this is Kansas. Will you be in my movie?” Kato is so funny and so nice. He’s a really, really good person. He was so professional and cool. He added to a lot of his lines, and they’re the best lines in the movie.

OK: Was it mainly ad lib?

KB: Kato was the only one to ad lib. Kato was only supposed to be in one scene, but we expanded the role to give him more screen time. I told him, “Say whatever you want.” And it worked.

OK: When is the release of the film?

KB: It’s going to be on Troma’s new streaming service, called TromaNow on Friday. That’s available to TromaNow subscribers. The official release date is in March. The DVD is going to come out. We’ll have a theatrical release too. Video on demand, of course. Amazon.

OK: Do you have plans to go to film school, or will you just keep making more movies?

KB: Film school is such a waste of money. My sister is an actress. The other day, she had to go to an audition at a film school. I came with her, and I was waiting outside the room, poking my head into all these classrooms. There was a classroom where the teacher was showing a class YouTube clips of Eddie Murphy stand-up comedy. These kids are paying $100,000 a year to watch Eddie Murphy clips on YouTube. [Laughs.] I’m not going to film school.

OK: You could use $100,000 to make another movie.

KB: Exactly. I could make 10 movies.

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OK: Do you want to go in the direction of this type of movie?

KB: Definitely. I don’t like serious movies. I like fun movies.

OK: That’s how some movies should be. There are a lot of serious movies, but people should be able to have fun at the movies too. Do you have any ideas for another film?

KB: I have a bunch of ideas lined up. It was hard to pick, but I did pick. But it’s a surprise. I keep giving hints. It’s going to be a pseudo-documentary.

OK: Is it going to be like Cannibal Holocaust? 

KB: Sort of, but not quite on that level. Have you seen Faces of Death?

OK: I’ve heard of it.

KB: It’s going to be sort of like that, with the narrator standing there. It’s going to be like an education film, but totally fake.

OK: You mentioned Roger Corman as one of your heroes. Have you met him? Do you have plans to reach out to any of your heroes and see if they want to work with you?

KB: I have met Roger Corman once. I just ran up to him and hugged him. I was 14 probably. He thought I was so weird. I was wearing this big, black fur cape and black leather pants and white go-go boots. I saw him at LACMA and hugged him so tight. I was like, “I love you!!!” And he was like, “Thank you.” I think I did the same thing to Jack Hill, who directed Spider Baby. When I was fourteen, I asked Quentin Tarantino to marry me.

OK: What was his response?

KB: He said, “When you’re eighteen, we’ll see.”

OK: Are you a film purist? Do you want to make things on film exclusively?

KB: Definitely. 100%.

OK: What is your advice to other young people that want to make a movie?

KB: Don’t sit around thinking about it. Just do it, because it’ll be worth it. 

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You can watch B.C. Butcher, written and directed by Kansas Bowling, on Troma's digital streaming service here. Follow Kansas on Instagram here to stay in loop with her cinematic pursuits. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

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The Kid Stays In The Picture: An Interview With Asthma's Benedict Samuel On Acting, Hope, And Redemption

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Asthma, which makes its premier today in New York and on streaming services, could be confused with a modern retelling of Godard’s Breathless, but it’s much more than that. Not that there’s anything wrong with putting Asthma in the same orbit of Breathless. Indeed, there is a galaxy of films about the outsider, the fuck up, always fucking things up, profusely apologizing, riding off into the sunset and finding redemption before the credits roll into a blur of black and white words. But Asthma is distinctly original in the sense of its cinematic nuance and its ability to crawl over your skin like warm honey. There is softness to it. It is a romantic film bent on destroying the archetype of a film about romance; whatever that means. Asthma is also the first film of director, Jake Hoffman, who shows an enormous amount of promise in the realm of telling a great story and making it look easy as hell to tell it. Another thing that makes the Asthma star shine the brightest is, well, its star: Benedict Samuel. An extraterrestrial by American standards, Samuel hails from the land down under. There is a strong history of Australian import to the American movie screen, but there is something iconic about Samuel.

Maybe it’s that he’s just cool or maybe because he’s not afraid to show his vulnerability – both things you can’t learn in acting class. In his role as Gus, Samuel shows a generous sensitivity by not making heroin addiction look fun, but where he radiates the most is in his ability to be relatable on screen, despite the tying off and nodding out. Starring alongside actress Krysten Ritter (Breaking Bad, Big Eyes), the character of Gus plays like a magnet to her character’s own suffering and longing. Together they go off on a journey of chaotic and dysfunctional proportions, from the gritty streets of New York City – the late, great poet and bon vivant of Manhattan’s high and low life Rene Ricard makes a cameo – to a hippie hideout in Connecticut’s countryside where a band of misfit musicians will give you major FOMO.

Along the way, we learn a lot about Gus – some revelations seem obvious, but important nonetheless, but some are more shocking, but not shocking when you realize the implications. Whatever the case is, Benedict Samuel was born to play the part. Cast after sending in an audition tape, Hoffman was unsure if he was seeing the actual character or an incredibly convincing actor. When we asked Hoffman if he was surprised by Samuel’s interpretation of the character, he had this to say: "When I saw Benedict's audition I was blown away by both his talent and his take on the character...Watching the tape I thought: that's the guy. That's not to say he did everything exactly how I imagined, rather it was fun to be surprised by his choices, [choices] that were his and felt honest, but always in synch with the original vision and intention."

In today’s cinematic landscape, there aren’t a lot of films where more than one scene gives you that visceral chill. There are also not a lot of films that feel memorable in the sense of capturing the aura of a zeitgeist – one that you can look back on without feeling duped. Asthma has all these qualities and watching it will become an important part of your movie-watching digest – that’s for sure. It also has cameo appearances by the likes of Rosanna Arquette, Iggy Pop and Nick Nolte. Or watch the damn movie for the sake of seeing Samuel’s performance. In the following interview, Autre has a casual conversation with Samuel over the phone while on his way to a cemetery in Australia to have his portraits taken for this feature. We talk about the weather, his acting style, how he prepares for an intense role like that of Gus, working with Iggy Pop, and why redemption and hope are precious things in which to hold on.

OLIVER KUPPER: I hear birds chirping. It sounds like paradise over there.

BENEDICT SAMUEL: Oh man it’s a beautiful day today, it’s gorgeous.

OK: We are in downtown L.A.

BS: Very nice, I love it down there. Where abouts?

OK: We are on Spring street, we’re in the heart of downtown L.A.

BS: Oh grand!

OK: Yeah we just moved our headquarters here.

BS: Oh cool man! I was flicking through the magazine online, it’s such a fucking great mag man.

OK: Thank you! We watched the film a couple nights ago and it’s incredible. You’re really great in it.

BS: Oh thanks man! So you enjoyed the film?

OK: Yeah really enjoyed it. Jake had showed me the trailer about seven or eight months ago and I couldn’t wait to see it. And I’m glad that IFC is putting it out.

BS: Yeah they’re great at supporting films which is awesome. It’s just what the film needs, you know?

OK: Are you going to be at the L.A. premier or were you at the recent private New York premier?

BS: No, I went to the New York premier, just last week. Which was crazy man, I think I was in the air longer than I was in New York. It was real quick.

OK: That’s wild. How was it? Was that the first time you’d seen it in a theater?

BS: No, I saw it with Jake when it got accepted into the Karlovy Vary, it’s a national film festival in the Czech Republic. The first time I saw it with the clean cut and the music and everything, was in the old Czech Republic.

OK: Wow. And that was a film festival right?

BS: Yeah, it’s called Karlovy Vary.

OK: So do you want to jump into this interview?

BS: Yeah man, sure!

OK: So my first question- when did you know that you wanted to be an actor? Was there a sort of a moment where you knew you wanted to become an actor?

BS: It wasn’t like a lightning bolt situation but it kind of gradually happened. I think that interest was encouraged unconsciously by my parents. We went to a lot of theatres as kids, we read a lot of books, and then my brother started acting in school. I look up to him very much and it just seemed really exciting and intriguing. There was a kind of mystery about it that got me hooked. So I kind of followed, over a series of time, my brother into it.

OK: Did you watch a lot of movies? Were there any actors that you were really inspired by or that you sort of looked up to, besides your brother?

BS: Growing up it was more theatre, but I remember secretly Dave and I taped Pulp Fiction on VHS and because we were so young and because it was rated R, we would come home after school and watch this film for like ten minutes before mum or dad got home. So we watched Pulp Fiction over the course of about three weeks. That’s a good memory. And so now I really love the work of Phillip C. Hoffman and people like that who are completely and utterly invested in that world.

OK: So in Asthma you’re working with Rosanna right? She was in Pulp Fiction, was that sort of strange?

BS: Yeah! It was a real trip, you know? She’s a real beautiful, graceful actor and it did cross my mind - like wow! Fuck, here we are.

OK: So you watched Pulp Fiction, but there are a lot of amazing Australian films. The independent film industry in is huge out there. Did you watch a lot of Australian films?

BS: Yeah, yeah I certainly did. There’s one independent film in particular that is a must. It’s called Wake in Fright, and I think it was made in the 70s. But it’s exactly what its title suggests. And it’s phenomenal. But also watching the Edgerton brothers as I kind of grew more into acting and the creative nature surrounding it, those guys were an inspiration in particular.

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OK: You went to a lot of theatre, were your parents in the theatre world?

BS: I’m pretty sure they did some amateur theatre along the way, but they’re both high school teachers.

OK: You’ve worked with your brother on a role, is that right?

BS: Yeah, I’m happy with it but it was certainly a learning curve. It’s an interesting process kind of trading notes and scripts back and forth. We’re working on a bunch of stuff at the moment which is exciting. But it’s a slow burn.

OK: Yeah, So I want to talk about your role in Asthma. It was a pretty intense character; I mean do you have a specific method that you sort of employ when you go into a character like that?

BS: It’s always tough to talk about that kind of stuff because in anything really, there’s not just one kind of technique. I always try and come from a place of honesty and not judgment whatsoever and try to talk about something real in a very creative and interesting way. So that’s always my ambition, and hopefully I don’t fall flat on my face.

OK: What’s life like between the scenes, is it hard to get out of character?

BS: I think naturally there are some things that stick with you for a little bit, more so than other things, but I don’t find it hard to excuse myself from the game that we’re playing, you know?

OK: And what was it like working with Jake?

BS: We hit it off immediately, and Jake and I developed a really great relationship. Which is really surprising because we only met over the tape that I did. But we just kind of got each other. I think Jake as a director is really calm and thoughtful. With that energy on set, coming from the person who is driving the scene, it’s infectious. That spreads through the crew. So it was fantastic, I think the world of him.

OK: And that was your first time in New York City, right?

BS: Yeah, I was there for three days driving around in a Rolls Royce, which wasn’t too bad.

OK: What was your experience like, what’d you think of New York?

BS: It was great. The funny thing is that it’s such a beautiful city and I hadn’t been there before. So, I’m playing this guy who’s like the New York fucking institution, and I’m looking up at stuff all the time, going - wow! And Jake’s like, Ben! Fuck man, people from New York don’t fucking look up. They look down. And I was like yeah, right, right, right.

OK: That’s funny. That must have been an awesome experience driving around in that Rolls Royce.

BS: Oh man, yeah I’ll never forget it, it was amazing.

OK: I guess there’s not a lot of movie roles that require you to have quite that great a time.

BS: I wish I got a Rolls for the shoot!

OK: Yeah of course. And what was your experience like, working with the late Rene Ricard and Iggy Pop? That must have been pretty cool.

BS: Yeah, I feel pretty lucky. I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. Firstly, working with Rene was just amazing. I didn’t know too much about him until Jake introduced me. I saw his artwork and had heard all these magical stories about him, and once I met the guy he lived up to every one of them. I think he was flirting with me. It was so much fun. He had these slippers that had dollar signs on them, I think he actually brought them himself.

OK: Wow, sounds about right.

BS: But yeah, it’s just such a shame that he couldn’t have seen the film because I think he would have been very pleased with his performance. And working with Iggy Pop was great, he rocked out, he didn’t know any of his fucking lines. The guy was drunk, (laughs) I’m kidding, but it was amazing. It was like working with one of the greats. Unbelievable.

OK: If you had an ultimate role that you would want to, or could play, what would that be?

BS: Um, tough questions mate! There’s not really one role, but one thing that I want to do, and keep doing, is working on the type of projects that allow you to have a collaborative, artistic conversation about what’s going on. That’s where I love to live- in that collaboration, and in the discussion about creating something that is a bit different, a bit skewed, a bit of a different viewpoint into the same story. I just want to exist with good people on good projects.

OK: Yeah! Are you working on anything now in Australia, or are you planning anything soon?

BS: Yeah, I just wrapped yesterday on a short called “Secret City” for Foxtel which is a political thriller, which is very nice. Jacki Weaver is in it, and a bunch of other fantastic actors. Also a show that I just finished earlier this year is premiering on Sunday, it’s a six-part mini series called “The Beautiful Lie” which is based on Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. It’s a contemporary re-telling of that. So yeah I’ve had a good year and a good time.

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OK: Yeah, it seemed like after Asthma - after it wrapped - you started getting a lot of roles, which is pretty amazing.

BS: Yeah, well I’m so thankful for Jake because he really could have hired anyone he wanted to. I know that he wanted to hire the right person and I feel very lucky that he thought that was me. I’ve got a lot to thank for Jake.

OK: I mean you’re perfect for that role, it made so much sense.

BS: Thank you.

OK: When people see that film, what do you want them to take away from watching it?

BS: It’s an interesting question because I try and stay out of the way of that kind of stuff because I think what’s intriguing about this film is that it could mean so many different things to so many different people. I had a lot of responses from people coming up like, “I lost my best friend to that drug” and “I have hope now from this film,” while other people have come up and said, “this guy’s a fucking dick” or “I’ve been hurt too.” So I try and stay out of that conversation and let it happen because it’s so interesting that the thing that we all watch in the cinema can mean so many different things and I like to allow that conversation to happen. It’s delightful, it really is. 

OK: Did you watch any other films or was there any research that you did to learn about how that worked?

BS: Yeah, I think I’ve said this in a few other interviews as well, but addiction is a very real, serious thing. I didn’t want to glorify what he was doing and I didn’t want to judge it either. Because there are people who are in the throws of addiction and I wanted to be very sensitive and I wanted to represent it without saying “this is terrible” or “this guy's a jerk.” So I watched a lot of documentaries about heroin and really approached it with sensitivity because I know there are people who are going through this, and thankfully I’m not, and thankfully I don’t know anyone who is. Which is a real blessing. I guess in regard to your question earlier, what the film really is about is a notion of redemption, of hope. And I think no matter what, there is always the opportunity for redemption. It’s just whether you take it or not.

OK: Yeah, the film had a happy ending.

BS: Yeah I agree. I’m glad.

OK: A lot of films end without a happy ending, and you’re left without that sense of redemption.

BS: I think the film really needs that too, because the content is heavy; it’s true, it’s real. I think Jake didn’t compromise himself by allowing the audience to have their cake and eat it too, you know?

OK: Sure! Well thank you so much for your time.

BS: Yeah! I’ll have to shoot up by the office next time I’m in L.A., that’ll be great. I also wanted to mention how fantastic David Myrick is, the director of photography. He became a really really great friend of mine and without him too we wouldn’t have captured all these beautiful things in such a thoughtful way. The way he and Jake worked together was just beautiful. He’s a dear friend of mine, I love him a lot.

OK: It was shot very beautifully, the light was very beautiful, it was very well done.

BS: It was gorgeous, yeah we were lucky to have such great people on board.

OK: I can’t wait to see it in a theater, we saw it in an office but I can’t wait to see it in that experience.

BS: You’ve gotta see me in my undies again.

OK: Yeah, that’s the main thing we’re looking forward to.

BS: I told Jake it should be in the poster, but he didn’t want to give anything away. 

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Asthma will make its premier tonight at the IFC Film Center in New York, director Jake Hoffman will be in attendance for a Q&A. You can buy tickets here. The film will also be available to stream on select streaming services. The film will make its Los Angeles premier on October 30th. text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. photographs by Elvis DiFazio, shot at the Camperdown Cemetery in Sydney Australia. Tuxedo jacket: vintage Gucci. Bow tie: vintage YSL. Shirt: Tom Ford. Pants: Models own. Stylist: Michael Azzollini. Follow Autre on Instagram:  @AUTREMAGAZINE

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The Real Brando: An Interview With Director Stevan Riley and Rebecca Brando On A New Documentary That Explores Her Father's Life In His Own Words

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Marlon Brando may be the most famous and iconic movie actor that ever lived, but he may also be the most misunderstood. In his younger years, he was handsome and brilliant and celebrated. He bulldozed his way through each flicker and celluloid frame with supernova luminance. The ladies loved him, and men wanted to be him. Brando also changed the way people act in movies, which was deeply instilled in him by the teachings of Stella Adler and her foundations for method acting. Before him, movies were like filmed plays and the lines were delivered with overly dramatic cadence. After Brando, realism seeped into performances, men could be vulnerable and tortured and show sides of themselves no one had ever seen on screen before. He made way for the rebel, the bruised outsider, and the tortured soul replicated by James Dean and every prototype since.

In his later years, Brando was considered persona non grata in a lot of social and professional circles – he refused to deliver lines and he was impossible to work with. Sometimes lines would be fed to him through a microphone in his ear. In Apocalypse Now, for which Brando was paid a million dollars for three weeks of work, he showed up to the set bloated and overweight. The part for Colonel Kurtz called for someone much frailer as it was written in Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness.’ Francis Ford Coppola was forced to re-envision a lot of the movie around the actor and his demands. However, there is a side to Brando that many people have never seen before. A side that they will soon get to see in a rare, intimate documentary that culls together over 200 hours of his personal voice memos that the actor kept throughout his life.

In the recounting of his life, you will learn that Brando is a hopeless romantic, a poet with a flowing, beautiful language and a deep, almost mystical understanding about the human condition. It is a side that is incongruous to his reputation. The touching documentary, entitled Listen to Me Marlon, was put in the hands of director Stevan Riley, who did a miraculous job at culling the countless hours of audio and film footage that the actor’s estate made available for the production. Not only does the film answer unanswered questions about the actor’s mysterious persona – it is also a parable of fame and disillusionment, love and heartbreak (Brando himself goes into detail about the deaths of his children), and it will no doubt be the last laugh from a man ridiculed into isolation and detachment from society. Recently, Autre got a chance to speak with Stevan Riley, as well as Brando’s own daughter, Rebecca Brando, about her collaboration on the documentary and how she would like her father to be remembered.  

Autre: How did you two meet? How did this documentary come to be?

Stevan Riley: Rebecca and I met very early on when we had the idea for the film, when access was just becoming available. That was around the very end of 2012. I received a call from Passion Pictures—a production company in London who I’ve directed a few films with. They said, “Would you like to direct a film on Marlon Brando?” I didn’t know anything about Marlon at all, but knew—especially in my early reading—that he was going to be a fascinating character.

Autre: Did you expect a challenge?

Steven Riley: It would be a great challenge to capture the real man, which people have been trying to do for decades. He remained quite elusive to biographers and other filmmakers. It would be a creative challenge. The estate—they were the ones who approached Passion Pictures. They were just, at the very same time, unpacking the archive, which had been in storage for ten years since Marlon’s death. I was very interested to see what was in there, what could we possibly use. There were loads of documentation. There were all sorts of objects and paraphernalia. And tapes as well. At the same time, I had to write an early proposal. Coincidentally, the ambition at the point was what the film ended up being. It had the same title—Listen To Me Marlon. It had this idea to use the tapes (and hope that there’s more to come), so we can tell the story in his own words. 

Autre: You had a lot of material to work with—I think it was 200 hours of footage. What were some of your emotions as you were collecting material and going through the editing process?

Stevan Riley: It was fascinating. Marlon was definitely a very complex character. Breaking that material down and forming as strong of a narrative as possible was definitely a creative challenge. I was also very keen to tell the emotional narrative. Certainly, when you’re editing that you experience a lot of it with the subject. You want to communicate as well as possible the emotions of the story. And Marlon’s emotions regarding things which were important to him, thing that concerned him. Whether it was his acting, his life, his love—all those things. But it was really fascinating. It was a real education. Marlon was such a thought-out and considerate man.

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"...It’s always hard to see the tragedy. That was really hard to watch...There were so many obstacles in his life and so many situations that he had to overcome. He did, in the end. He prevailed. All the tragedies—he didn’t wallow in sorrows."

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Autre: He seems like a poet or a scholar. Rebecca, did you learn anything new, or discover any revelations about your father through the making of this film?

Rebecca Brando: Did I learn anything new? I always come up with the same answer, which is that I really didn’t learn anything new. But it was just pieced together so well. It makes me very happy that Stevan was able to piece it all together, showing the human side of my father. Showing that he basically has the same struggles as anyone has—feeling very vulnerable at times, fearful even on the set. You see him talking to himself and saying, “Forget everybody else. You have a right to be where you are and do what you need to do.” He was always psychoanalyzing people when we would go to restaurants, or anywhere in public. He would psychoanalyze me if I were lying on the bed with him, reading poetry together. He would ask me, “What are you thinking right now?” It’s interesting, you have these thoughts…But back to your question. No, I didn’t learn anything new, but I’m just so happy that it talks about my dad’s background, the actor.

Autre: Did you learn anything new about him as an actor?

Rebecca Brando: I thought it was super insightful. Maybe that part is what I learned a lot. He rarely talked to us about his work. Or rather, I should say me. He didn’t talk to me about his acting and what would happen on the sets. It was interesting to see that side of him, how he was a professional. He did all of his research before he did the film. He would read about the culture and the current events if it took place in a particular country. He’d read up about everything. Then, he would totally immerse himself with all of this research. He would come to the set and improvise with the lines, make it customized. That’s the only part that I learned something new about him.

Autre: He wanted to release this footage. He was private in his life, but he wanted to release this footage later, right?

Rebecca Brando: My father was so intuitive and so forward-thinking. I’ll say it again—he was always thinking in the future. As much as he wanted to be private, I think because there were so many tapes, he had to have known that someone was going to find these one day and do something great with it. I’m sure that came to his mind many times. I think he did make the tapes for his own self-analysis, for his own healing.

Autre: Was there anything that was specifically omitted? Is there anything that you think he might object to?

Rebecca Brando: Well, it’s always hard to see the tragedy. That was really hard to watch. But I didn’t object. I can’t object, because I see Stevan’s goal in putting that in the film, to show that there were so many obstacles in his life and so many situations that he had to overcome. He did, in the end. He prevailed. All the tragedies—he didn’t wallow in sorrows. He persevered and kept on protecting all of us kids. He was still very present in our lives.

Autre: What do you hope people will learn about Marlon Brando from watching this documentary?

Rebecca Brando: My hope is that this film will clear his name. The person who was difficult on set, the person who refused the Oscar—there was a reason for him doing all these things. I hope they will understand him more as the human. The human, not the actor.

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Listen to me Marlon will open in New York and Los Angeles at the end of July, 2015 and in the Bay Area on August 7th. See an exclusive clip from the documentary below. text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

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Tangerine Director Sean Baker Talks Monster Flicks, Shooting Feature Films on Smartphones, and His New Sex Worker Comedy

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Tangerine is a film to celebrate, not only because it brings a bright beautiful shade of blooming reality to transgender issues, but also because it is a return to the inventiveness of filmmaking. Shot entirely with iPhone 5S smartphones, the film is a triumph of cinema’s capacity to capture the human condition using whatever means necessary. With past projects that include Greg the Bunny and Starlet, director Sean Baker could have gone with much more expensive cameras, but decided to stick with smartphones and all the inherent challenges – challenges that were worked out with special, newly invented rigs and filmmaking apps. The decision lends an atmosphere of spontaneity to Tangerine that wouldn’t have been captured otherwise. The film, which takes place on Christmas Eve, follows Sin-Dee (played by Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and Alexandra (played by Mya Taylor) as they search for the former’s pimp through a landscape of lascivious pleasure seekers involved in all manners of sins of the flesh – all among the neon hued and gum stained sidewalks of Tinseltown’s soiled boulevards. When watching the film, you are injected with a new enthusiasm about moviemaking – an enthusiasm that hasn’t been felt since Harmony Korine was using camcorders to shoot Gummo, or when Thomas Vinterberg was using handycams and mini-DVs to shoot the 1998 Danish film, Festen, or even when Richard Linklater was using 16mm to shoot Slacker on a shoestring budget. It seems that using unpredictable tools results in beautiful cinematic experiences. In the following interview, Autre speaks with the director of Tangerine, Sean Baker, about his falling in love with monster movies, transgender rights and why he decided to shoot his third feature film on smartphones. 

OLIVER KUPPER: When did you know that you wanted to make films? Was there a specific film that you saw that really inspired you?

SEAN BAKER: Yeah, it goes way back, actually. My mother brought me to the local library when I was in first grade. They were playing a 16mm of old Universal films—monster films. It was the burning hill scene in James Whale’s Frankenstein—that climax—that got me hooked. Up until then, I had always said, “I want to be a fireman! I want to be a construction worker!” I left the library that day and said, “I want to be a filmmaker!” From that point on, I knew I wanted to direct films.

OK: That’s amazing. I want to talk about your first effort in filmmaking. Your first effort in getting your work out there was Greg the Bunny, correct?  

SB: Well, yes, that was the first one that hit. My first film was a film called “Four Letter Words.” It was a look at guys in the suburbs. I’m hoping some day I’ll have the money to remaster it. It was shot on a 35; I made it in my early twenties. It was very much like a social-realist Kevin Smith film. Because in your twenties you see time in a different way, I let time fly by. I think I shot the film in ’96, but it wasn’t until 2000 that Matt Dentler (now he’s with iTunes, but at the time he was running South by Southwest) was the first champion of my stuff. When I was in post-production of Four Letter Words and trying to find this movie in post, two friends and I (Dan Milano and Spencer Chinoy) picked up a puppet one night. I realized what a genius Dan Milano is, when he started improvising with this puppet. The next thing you know, we have a public access show that gets recognized by IFC. Then, the next thing you know, we’re going to have some things on IFC, which lead to getting on Fox. We signed over with Seth Green, which is where we got most of our fan base. We went back to IFC, and then we had a spinoff on MTV. So I could say that this was a wonderful, happy accident that supported me through many years of making independents.

OK: You were an independent filmmaker, went to public access, made Greg the Bunny, and then went back to independent filmmaking?

SB: At my heart, my love is cinema.

OK: Your work deals with a lot of darker themes and cultures on the fringe. Where did these interests or appreciations come from?

SB: I think it’s a natural desire to explore the world, to try to understand and identify with people from different cultures, who have very different experiences and upbringings. For me, usually, it stems from a desire to explore a different location, first. Then, it’s finding the community within that location, and really taking the time to collaborate with them. For example, with Tangerine, it was about that unofficial red light district of Santa Monica. I knew of it because I lived close by. I had already been exploring sex work with my last film, so there was a natural progression. That area happens to be frequented by transgender sex workers. First and foremost, it was a look into that chaotic neighborhood. Then, it developed into exploring the lives of the transgender sex workers who are really in a place where they are forced to work the streets. They’re not given the same opportunities. Most of them are trans women of color who aren’t given opportunities because of bias, prejudice, and racism. Because of the cards they’ve been dealt, they’re living these lives. There was a natural desire to explore that. I had already had empathy and sympathy for them, but I wanted to get to know them on a human level. That was really what led to that.

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"...We were shooting out on the street with very little money, so we wanted to keep our prints small. We didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves. We just didn’t have the money for security. We didn’t have the money to own location....Even with Donut Time, we paid them to be there, but we could never shut down their business. We had to work around real customers that were coming in and out. So what the iPhone did was grant us a low-profile."

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OK: In terms of transgender and gay rights, do you want this film to be an important document of this time to humanize these people that have been on the fringe for so long?

SB: Yes, it’s most definitely in focus right now. Especially over the last few months with Caitlyn Jenner, the public television show which focuses on the trans individual, Transparent… When we set out to make this film over two years ago, it was something that was rarely talked about. I think it’s a sign that we’re all thinking the same way in terms of our society recognizing these individuals. I’m focusing on one very small—very small—sub-community. This film is not meant to represent all trans people. It focuses on the corner of Santa Monica and Highland where there happens to be sex work going on.

OK: And the movie was shot on iPhones. I don’t think that’s ever been done before in the sense of a feature film. Where did that idea come from?

SB: It came from a very organic place. I would be the first one to call myself out if it were done as a gimmick. I’m a cinephile, as I told you. If I was given the money, I wouldn’t have shot this on a 5s. But maybe I wouldn’t have made as good of a movie. I think in the end, the fact that we shot on a smartphone, there were so many benefits that came with it. At least for this story. I’m not saying for every movie. I actually hope my next film is shot on film. But for this particular movie, it helped in so many ways. Number one, we were shooting out on the street with very little money, so we wanted to keep our prints small. We didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves. We just didn’t have the money for security. We didn’t have the money to own location. We had, of course, insurance and permits. Even with Donut Time, we paid them to be there, but we could never shut down their business. We had to work around real customers that were coming in and out. So what the iPhone did was grant us a low-profile.

OK: And you were working with very green actors, right? 

SB: The second thing, and probably the most important thing… I was working with two first-time actors—Mya Taylor and Kiki Rodriguez. Those two were already aspiring actors and professionals. What I’ve learned from shooting other first-timers is that there’s always a hump they have to get through. They have to drop their inhibitions. Even with Prince Adu from Prince of Broadway—it took him a little while to get used to the camera. In this case, everybody has a smartphone. For example, these girls were taking selfies of themselves between takes with their own phones. There was no difference between what we were doing and what everybody else was doing. Their confidence level and their lack of intimidation was really there from minute one. They were on the same level as James Ransone and Karren Karagulien. It was wonderful, in that case, where suddenly I was able to jump in, and even first-timers became great actors.

OK: For someone who is a little more conservative or doesn’t understand this world, how would you invite them to appreciate this film?

SB: I would just say to give this film a chance. I have a feeling that, like me, you’ll fall in love with these characters. I fell in love with these characters. I think that no matter who you are and what your politics are, you will identify with these characters. They’re going through struggle, but we all are. Of course, they’re also dealing with hardships that we’ll never know. At the same time, Tangerine is about friendship. Tangerine is also about fidelity. We all have friends; we all understand friendship. And I’m pretty sure a large percentage of us have also had to deal with fidelity. Whether we’ve done it to our partners or our partners have done it to us, we all understand the consequence of fidelity. We all understand what jealousy is. If you go into the film understanding that this is not a “life of” movie, but is actually a human story filled with humor and characters that I think everyone will love—even if they are flawed. I’m not just talking about the two main characters, but also the characters on the fringe. Even the characters who might be a little crass in what they say are still lovable characters. That’s how I would invite the more conservative crowd in.

OK: If this movie were to play in a cult cinema double-feature, what would you play next with it?

SB: That’s a good question. I never had a double-feature in mind with Tangerine. Maybe the Estonian film Tangerine. [Laughs.] No, I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that. Maybe I can text you later with my answer.

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Magnolia Pictures presents Tangerine, directed by Sean Baker, opening July 17, 2015 at Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema in San Francisco, Landmark’s California Theatre in Berkeley. You can also see the film in Los Angeles and New York. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

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Psychomagic: An Adventure and Interview with Alejandro Jodorowsky

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An Adventure and Interview with Alejandro Jodorowsky 

by ADARSHA BENJAMIN

Alejandro Jodorowsky is one of the great masters of surrealist cinema.  His trinity of violent, extraordinary and symbolic masterpieces – El Topo, Holy Mountain, and Santa Sangre – have made him into an icon. Jodorowsky is not only a cult filmmaker but also a poet, author, comic book writer and spiritual mystic who holds on to the mysteries of the universe like tightly-kept secrets only to be shared with those worthy of his message. Born to Ukrainian-Jewish parents in Chile in 1929, he eventually moved to Paris to become a mime. There, he was first introduced to the avant-garde movements of performance art and cinema. His first feature film, Fando y Lis, about a young man and his paraplegic sister on an odyssey through a post-apocalyptic landscape searching for a mythological city called Tar, was beset by riots when it came out in the theater. His subsequent films proved to be midnight cult hits that earned Jodorowsky the status of legendary cineaste.  A spiritual guru, Jodorowsky heals deep-rooted psychological wounds with something he calls “psychomagic.” He has written two books on the subject; Psychomagic: The Sacred Trap and The Dance of Reality – an adaptation of which is set to start filming later this year.  Here is the story of my afternoon with Alejandro Jodorowsky. 

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I’m locked out of the apartment I’m staying in in Paris.  I don’t have my wallet. I have one roll of film rolling around the bottom of my bag. It’s raining. Alejandro Jodorowsky’s apartment is one hour away and I have twenty minutes to get there. No money for a metro ticket, since my wallet is locked inside the apartment I am locked out of.  Like an angel from above, a nice French gentleman hands me a ticket. Small success. I run to the metro, but get lost. I find my way by memory.  The last time I visited his apartment was on a trip with James Franco and his producer Vince Jolivette to discuss a potential creative collaboration. During that meeting, he chose three Tarot cards for me, which to this day enlighten and heal a certain side of myself, and have further inspired my artistic vision. This time around, I’m alone to photograph Jodorowsky for this story and for a future photographic series.  I arrive at his building. I’m thirty minutes late. I ring the buzzer.

 “Bonjour?”

“Bonjour Alejandro, it’s Adarsha.”

“Adarsha?”

“Yes.

“Okay.”

He tells me to come to the fourth floor – in Spanish.  I walk up the same familiar dark winding staircase. Last time, I was nervous and laughing hysterically the entire way up the spiral staircase. This time I’m out of breath, wet as a dog, and completely out of my mind with jetlag. Light peeks under the door. The hallway smells a bit funny. He opens the door and greets me kindly. The light inside is warm. Yellow Paris lights. I look around. I remember all the books. He leads me into the office. Pointing to a clock, he diplomatically acknowledges my tardiness. “Why yes, Alejandro Jodorowsky, I was thirty minutes late.” He doesn’t really mind. We move on. I’m here to photograph. He sits by the window. There is not much light. Remember, one roll of film. It’s also gray and rainy outside – Parisian skies.  A little lamp suffices. I pull out my little Honeywell.  He laughs at my modest camera. It’s a laugh of camaraderie. After all, he is an underground filmmaker, and I could only imagine some sense of nostalgia rushed over him in that moment. Snap. Snap. Snap. I take some portraits. We talk about film, but other than that it is mainly silent – silent, but comfortable.  We move to a room of plants – orchids, succulents, and cacti.  He points to a giant Bonsai. “They were once tiny plants.” “Bonsai?” I ask. “Yes!” “Now they grow,” he says wisely. His apartment is a living testament to his creative endeavors. The original film reels from Holy Mountain and El Topo sit on the bookshelf behind him. I take a few more pictures. He hands me a book of his – in Spanish – artwork from a previous, botched albeit grandiose attempt to adapt the 1965 science fiction novel Dune by Frank Herbert.  Jodorowsky had planned to film the adaptation as a ten-hour feature starring Salvador Dalí, Orson Welles, Gloria Swanson and Mick Jagger.  Dune was later adapted by David Lynch in 1981 and panned by critics and audiences alike. I wrap up shooting – the film is almost done. I take one final photograph of both Jodorowsky and myself – kind of a self-portrait – a reminder to myself that I was there, in that magical moment, with one of the greatest artists of our time. There are not many words to describe an artist – a man – like Alejandro Jodorowsky.  I leave his apartment – back into the Paris streets – past the opera house at Bastille – into oblivion and beyond. Once again, this magic man has further enlightened my path as an artist, without even trying. I asked him to choose three tarot cards for the future of art, and I hope in their mystical alliance you also find a token of inspiration to heal a side of yourself that may have been locked or dormant. I think silently, this is Alejandro’s wish as well.

What is it about cinema that is so important? 

Cinema is a goddess becoming a bitch for the industry. Just as Christ has been converted by the masked pedophile priests. In the kingdom of dreams, the Gods are significant. Being the supreme being of art and film, the one which encompasses all the other arts, which is vital for the rise of our spirits. But now it is poisoned. 

Can you remember the first moment you wanted to make films or what brought you to want to make films?

When I was seven years old I saw, The Hunchback of Notre Dame from the genius Charles Laughton. And Frankenstein, performed by the genius Boris Karloff. I wanted to become one of those two monsters; I spent the entire day making horrible faces.

How did your collaboration with John Lennon come about and what was it like working with him?

I never worked with John Lennon. He saw my film El Topo and he admired my work. Yoko Ono said I was a filmmaker ahead by thirty years. They decided to help socially and economically. Thanks to them I got to debut El Topo at the Elgin Theater. As well thankful for Alain Klein, who was his producer at ABKO, gave me a million dollars to do what I wanted to do.... I made Holy Mountain.

Who are some of your favorite poets?

Lao-Tse, because besides being a poet he was a scholar. And Heraclitus, because besides being a scholar he was a poet.

Who do you admire working in film today? Is there anyone who you think is doing truly groundbreaking work?

Nicolas Winding Refn. Bronson and Drive.

What do you see as the most important lesson that a young artist can learn these days?

Don’t make movies to make money, but to find your soul. Never work for the bureaucrats in Hollywood.

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"I don´t think with ideas, but with my testicles. I don´t search, I ejaculate."

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What have been the biggest misconceptions about you and your films?

Sólo pedos de culos que se creen cerebros. 

How do you think of new ideas for your comic books? 

I don´t think with ideas, but with my testicles. I don´t search, I ejaculate.  

Can you describe an interesting anecdote you’ve encountered during your psychomagic sessions?

A guru who had many followers came to see me. He asked me for a remedy to sleep because he suffered from insomnia. Surprisingly, I took him into my arms and made him suck on a baby’s bottle. He then burst into tears like a baby. Nobody could silence him. I had to hypnotize him to make him sleep.

Can society today still learn from psychomagic? 

Obviously, the psychomagic of individuals is passed to the social psychomagic. The countries are sick, like children. We have to make them grow so we can be a planet.

What art forms do you think represent the now?

The spiritual kiss. 

What does the future look like to you?

There is no future. We live in the eternal present. And this present is marvelous. As the world is, not as the world has been. If a cup of gold has mud, gold still remains.

If you were to choose three tarot cards for the coming ages, for the future of art and film, which ones would they be?

18, La Luna. 19, El Sol. 21, El Mundo. 

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Alejandro Jodorowsky's epic story of his emigration from the Ukraine to Chile amidst the political and cultural upheavals of the 19th and 20th centuries is told in fantastical, mythic form in the new book Where the Bird Sings Best. Jodorowsky’s book transforms family history into heroic legend: incestuous beekeepers hide their crime with a living cloak of bees, a czar fakes his own death to live as a hermit amongst the animals, a devout grandfather confides only in the ghost of a wise rabbi, a transgender ballerina with a voracious sexual appetite holds a would-be saint in thrall. This interview was originally published in Autre Issue 2 (2012). Text, interview and photographs by Adarsha Benjamin. 

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