anderswolleck

Sherrybaby is a powerful film starring Maggie Gyllenhaal. Heroin addict Sherry has just been released from prison after a three-year stint for robbery, and the film follows her attempts to reconnect with her four-year old daughter. I recently had a chance to speak with Sherrybaby writer/director Laurie Collyer.

Check out the official site for Sherrybaby

Daniel Robert Epstein: Congratulations for winning the Crystal Globe [at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in Czechoslovakia].

Laurie Collyer: Thank you. It was pretty fun.

DRE: Were you at the festival?

LC: Yeah, I stayed pretty much the whole time. I actually turned the whole thing into a honeymoon. It was awesome.

DRE: Did this script get to Maggie Gyllenhaal in the usual way?

LC: Pretty much. Having the Sundance Lab behind me helped because she had also done the lab the year before. The Sundance Lab helped open a lot of doors.

DRE: What made you shoot the film in this verite style?

LC: Well I made a documentary in 2000 called Nuyorican Dream and I did want this script to have a very naturalistic feel. But I hadnt planned to do any handheld initially because I thought that would be what people would expect. But we had a really short shooting schedule and a six-year-old actress. So we shot all the scenes with the little girl handheld and I think that adds tension because its the only stuff thats handheld and its the heart of the story.

DRE: What was the inspiration for the story?

LC: I actually based the story on the life of a really old friend of mine. We grew up together in Mountainside, New Jersey. I started writing the script in 1994 when I heard that she had been going through all this shit like jail and leaving her baby with her mother. I was working in group homes and foster care with kids whose parents were going through things like what this girl was going through. Then I got more serious about it as I got more into filmmaking and I actually did a couple years of research with convicts and ex-convicts in New York. One of their stories became the scene where she gives a blowjob to the guy who gets her a job which I think is the saddest scene in the movie. This woman told me about this agency in the city where you cant get a good job unless you blow the interviewer.

DRE: As a first time feature director how was it doing some of the more explicit scenes?

LC: Im usually pretty bold about that subject matter. I think that SuicideGirls is really cool so writing that material is really easy and trying to sell it to producers and stuff was really easy but actually being on set with the actors made me nervous.

DRE: You could have shot this not so explicitly. What made you put it all out there like that?

LC: It is my style I think. Ive always been very uninhibited about sexual matters so I just felt, Why hold back, really? Compared to some of the stories I heard in my research its pretty tame.

DRE: What did you think about making Sherry so unsympathetic?

LC: At a certain point, I was very concerned that my protagonist would be an asshole or a jerk. She makes a lot of stupid choices and she loses her temper and I think thats why Maggies so brilliant in the role. She manages to make all these bold bad choices and be very explicit and desperate and very open but appealing at the same time. I think of how I came up with the scene where she sings. Instead of just having this character show her frustration by becoming violent, which Ive seen a lot, why not have her try something more positive from the heart like singing? Thats where that scene came from.

DRE: How was it working with Maggie?

LC: She and I developed a really strong connection because before shooting we did a very detailed script analysis. I sent her to drug rehabs and parole officers and halfway houses and stuff just to hang out.

DRE: Besides the fact that Maggies such a great actress, what made you think that she was perfect to play Sherry?

LC: Shes got this complexity where she can handle really tough material and still be totally appealing. She has incredible charisma and shes so much fun to watch and shes operating on so many levels. Shes just a very smart, very self aware woman and I find that really attractive.

DRE: Was Danny Trejo a consultant as well as an actor in the movie?

LC: No he wasnt a consultant. But I guess he was informally for his scenes. We did all these Alcoholics Anonymous scenes together and Danny was the one who said It works if you work it, it wont if you dont. He was very versed in AA culture and that really helped in shooting those scenes. He himself is an ex-convict so he brought all that to the role.

DRE: You had one of the great film editors on this with Curtiss Clayton. What did he bring to the picture?

LC: He brought brilliance to the footage. He loved the script and he was an advisor to a friend of mine at the Sundance Lab. So she put us together and I was really lucky that he was available and that he really loved the material. For the first cut he was in LA and I was in New York. So he was cutting on his own and sending me tapes every week and then wed talk. Hes a genius editor with all the little things Maggie does, like when shes walking down the street and the way she looks behind her back. He found performance in every scene.

DRE: There are a lot of scenes done in one shot. Was that just because of the style you were working in or just how it worked out?

LC: I actually wanted to do more of that. I wanted it to have this classic European look, so I shot wide as much as possible and had really long takes. We tried to do that as much as possible but its hard to shoot like that.

DRE: Are working on anything else?

LC: Im on page 62 of my new script and Im pitching to adapt a book. But I have three or four other scripts that Ive written. One is a vaguely unmakeable movie about a college student who goes on a junior year abroad to Germany and becomes a left-wing terrorist. But now that Ive gotten this European recognition Im thinking Maybe it isnt as unmake-able as I thought.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

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