00:25I saw Please Baby Please.
00:27I also saw Give Me Pity.
00:30So I was able to see both the bookends of the festival.
00:34But the one thing I wanted to first talk to you about is perspective and perception, especially in genre.
00:41I mean, because you're doing things like as an ode almost to the 50s, but Give Me Pity is like
00:46the spectaculars on TV.
00:49Could you talk about approaching that in terms of vision, but also in terms of style?
00:56Sure.
00:57You know, I don't have very much love or need to be retro or nostalgic.
01:04I don't necessarily consider making period work, either of those things.
01:10I think that I see it through like a lens of my own time, if that makes sense.
01:15Like, for instance, if you watch a movie like Carol, it's like the perfect 50s, right?
01:20That's what they're trying to do.
01:22These like perfect, delicate props.
01:24And I love to make it about sort of traveling through the 50s into the 80s, into the end of
01:33the millennium, into now.
01:35So it's like everything's a little exaggerated.
01:38Everything is a little bit more like hyphy and wild so that I can get in my own aesthetic and,
01:45you know, infuse it with a lens of time.
01:48And it's the same with Give Me Pity, you know, it's like I love thinking about these other eras, but
01:53I don't want to pay a direct homage to them.
01:56I want to distort them and make them sort of nightmarish and dreamlike so that they're not a perfect picture
02:02mirror of a time.
02:04I'm not a historian.
02:07I'm an artist.
02:08No, no, for sure.
02:09No, no.
02:09And that's why, like, I saw a little, especially in Please, Baby, Please, to Eraserhead.
02:15Yeah.
02:16Oh, that's cool.
02:17That's cool.
02:18You know, and because it's about using that aspect, but directing your actors in such a specific way.
02:24I mean, Andrea, and I've talked to her many times, you know, seeing her, she goes so much farther than
02:29I've ever seen her before.
02:31And yet it's with the style, you know.
02:33Yeah.
02:34Oh, she's, you know, she's fantastic.
02:35She's so committed.
02:37You know, I love all of Andrea's work, and I'm an enormous fan of hers.
02:41But I really have a connection to her comedic work because I find that that's a place where she can
02:50be extreme and performative.
02:54She's an amazing dancer.
02:56So it's just, you know, watching her do the kind of movement that she does when she's in comedy and
03:01the way that she sort of stretches her look, her vibe, her energy.
03:05That's really, you know, where my inspiration came from when I was shooting.
03:11You know, it might sound corny to you, but Arthur refuses to be a man.
03:17Well, Arthur, if you're not a man, what are you?
03:20I am a man.
03:21I just don't feel the need to act male.
03:25Well, both of the characters, both Susan Arthur and with Harry, is the fact of, you know, using the irony
03:31and sort of making them mirror reflections as they turn.
03:34You know, can you sort of talk about that?
03:36Well, Harry, too, is an amazing actor, and I find him to be a romantic lead, period.
03:44You know, I think he should be cast as a romantic lead.
03:47He knows how to guide the story, and he knows how to track a character's arc in this beautiful way.
03:56And for him and Andrea, you know, when they met on the production and were first in their costumes for
04:03our very first scene together, I could sense immediately, you know, oh, this is Arthur.
04:09This is Suze.
04:10They look very specific.
04:11They seem like a couple, but different, you know.
04:14And she has her feminine wiles, and he has his, you know, more male-sensitive tendencies, but still separate, opposite.
04:23And then the traveling of the film is to get them to, as you say, switch and become more each
04:30other.
04:31And I think over the shoot, they started to somewhat ape each other's movement and somewhat ape each other's facial
04:40expressions, and they kind of pass each other, you know, like meeting somewhere in the middle of the film, and
04:48then go off into more extreme versions of one another.
04:52And that's a testament to brilliant acting, because obviously we're shooting out of sequence, and they're tracking their characters.
05:00But yes, that is the theme of the movie, when you, whether you're queer or not, or whether you're on
05:07a queer journey within your relationship or not, that feeling of being with someone, loving someone, and then sort of
05:13becoming them.
05:15And, you know, just kind of synthesizing into one sort of blob, and where you go from there, and how
05:21you grow from there.
05:23It's hard to believe I was even born male.
05:26I've never been enough of a genuine man.
05:29To suggest I am one, so maybe I'm not.
05:35Boy, what a kick.
05:36And the notion of identity, even with both characters, and how their fantasies sort of play out, is in some
05:42of those sequences, is so key, because of, you know, the aspect of more Andrea's character with S&M, you
05:50know, and all those aspects.
05:51You know, could you sort of talk about that and creating those sort of mind elements, like inside their mind
05:59as that floats into the movie?
06:01Fantasy plays a huge part in all of my work.
06:03I really care about fantasy life and sexual imagination, but also like, just where the mind wanders when you're having
06:16your private moments.
06:17And I do think that, you know, when you're with a person and you really love them and you've chosen
06:24them and that feels strong, your fantasy life starts to become very specific and tailored to you.
06:30And it can become strange and odd and mysterious part of yourself that you don't feel on a conscious level
06:37every day.
06:38So recreating that and making a sort of specific fantasy life for Andrea's character was definitely about her becoming engaged
06:47in these, the fantasies of these violent men, and that she would be dominating them and that she would be
06:53becoming them and she would be becoming this like tough male leather daddy figure.
06:58And for Harry's character, and for Harry's character, his fantasies would be more romantic and his fantasies are more about,
07:06you know, looking at Teddy, the male object of his affection, and seeing this pink light and seeing the sort
07:15of Doris Day, you know, like lightness of the era, you know, this idealized love that he doesn't necessarily have
07:25because he has realistic love.
07:27And so, you know, his fantasies are these softer pink imaginations, and hers are these harder blues and reds of
07:37a sort of like sexual perversity, like nighttime neon sensation, if that makes sense.
08:08And so, you know, his fantasies are these different types of things.
Comments