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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

 
 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.