Greta Gerwig made her first appearance in a mumblecore film by phone, sending in voicemails and camera-phone photos to represent her off-screen character in director Joe Swanberg's 2006 dramedy LOL. Since then, the flaxen haired 24-year-old has become the unofficial face of the movement, starring in (and generating lots of press for) Swanberg's well-received 2007 film Hannah Takes the Stairs and this week's Baghead from those other mumblecore veterans, the Duplass brothers, makers of 2005's The Puffy Chair. This fall, IFC Films is expected to release the next Swanberg-Gerwig collaboration, a high-octane, sexually-charged drama called Nights and Weekends, which debuted at this year's SXSW festival and had some critics hailing it as the mumblecore Scenes from a Marriage.
Baghead is an attempt to mix up the formula a bit -- the 'no script, no problem' aesthetic and focus on twenty-something relationship angst is still front and center, but this time the characters occupy a genre piece, with all the rules and expectations that entails. The story begins with a group of four independent filmmakers driving to a cabin deep in the Texas woods, where they plan to hole up until inspiration strikes and they come up with a good idea for a movie. Little do they know that someone lurking outside their cabin is following a script of his own and he has ... final cut! (Cue scary music.) SuicideGirls recently sat down with Greta Gerwig in Manhattan to talk about all of her new projects, the siren call of the mainstream movie world, and camping.
Ryan Stewart: I heard a funny audio interview of you a while back, in which you were like, "Yeah, I'll continue acting, as long as I can write my own dialogue and do whatever I want."
Greta Gerwig: That particular thing that I said, I look back and I'm like, "What was I talking about?" I was in this very specific mind-frame where I was like, "I only want to do one thing." Ultimately, though, it's pretty boring to only do one thing. Also, I think that as somebody who does these improvisational movies, you run out of ideas at some point, or who you are is kind of limited. I think that doing different kinds of acting and working with different people kind of feeds the well, so that when I do improv again, I've got more "stuff." To just constantly be running your mouth seems pointless.
RS: Do you feel like you can only play shades of Greta in a loosely structured mumblecore film?
GG: I actually think Baghead is a good example [where] they let me make a whole character. She's nothing like me. I get to dress her and make her talk and make her totally different and that was really fun. I think it really depends on the kind of filmmaker I'm working with. Some filmmakers are like, "Just be yourself, and some filmmakers are more like, "Here's the kind of person I want, see what you can do with it." Certainly working with Joe [Swanberg], it tends to be versions of yourself. With other people, it's been completely leftfield.
RS: You've never had an experience yet of a director standing over you and being like, "No, that's not how Amelia Earhart would act!"
GG: I've never played anyone yet who has actually had an existence separate from me. But like, Yeast, that I did with Mary Bronstein, that character is completely not me and totally strange. All of us played people totally different from ourselves, although it was all improvised.
RS: Did the Baghead directors bring you on board as more of a collaborator or were they hiring you strictly as an actress?
GG: I would say they were hiring me to be an actress in the movie, but they also really do encourage improvisation and all of that, so it was kind of a mix and match of what they wanted out of Greta. They wanted me to execute their ideas, but also to bring new stuff to the table when they needed me to.
RS
id you think you were going to be making a straight-up horror film?
GG: Well, the original script read like a horror film, much more so because Mark and Jay are big structure people. The structure of the script moved, it read like horror -- especially the second half of it -- but then when we got there it became pretty apparent that Mark and Jay were interested in the same things they're always interested in, which is what I'm interested in, which is really small, awkward interactions. So once we were making it, it felt less like that. Also, nobody really knew what they were doing.
RS: In a bad way?
GG: No, in an interesting way. I had never been in a horror film and they had never made anything that was supposed to be scary, so at any given moment we never really knew what was scary and what was just silly. It was a lot of hit and miss. So, we had to do some scenes tons of times because we didn't know what would work and what wouldn't.
RS: Did that extend even to shooting alternate endings, things like that?
GG: No, not alternate endings. By the time we got to the ending ... we knew what the ending would be. Just in terms of, 'Is it scary to show somebody's face when they're running away from somebody, or is it scary to show the ground?' We didn't know, so there were just a lot of tight things and we just did it again and again.
RS: Would you have been comfortable if there had been more in the way of violence?
GG: Yeah, sure. I just did an actual horror film called The House of the Devil.
RS: The one with Dee Wallace, right?
GG: Yeah, and in that one actually my head is blown off, but it was really fun. So yeah, I would have been fine with that, but the Duplasses were interested in making something that was not gory at all. They were interested in making something that's actually what it looks like when people are scared, that kind of thing.
RS: Going from a mumblecore horror film to a more traditional horror film -- is it like two different worlds?
GG: I can see how it looks like two worlds from the outside. I met Ti West, who directed it, at SXSW [through mutual friends]. I feel that mumblecore is a really loose term and every time people talk about it they talk about a new set of movies. The truth is that most of these people are just friends and it has nothing to do with the kind of films that they make. Ti makes totally different films than the Duplasses, so in my mind it's one continuous thing of friendship and filmmakers, but I can see how it looks separate.
RS: Joe Swanberg has talked about the theories that inform his filmmaking, like the notion that having a tight script hinders performance, and so on. Do you subscribe to the same set of rules, more or less?
GG: Having now done things for two years and working with different kinds of directors, I feel like it's really what kind of movie you want to make and what kind of story you want to tell. If you're going to make a completely improvised, loose-limbed piece without a lot of plot structure then it wouldn't serve you to have a script, but I think Mark and Jay needed to have a script and needed to know what they're going to do.
RS: It's a genre movie, with rules.
GG: Yeah, it's a genre movie and it's also balancing so many different tones. As a whole, mumblecore movies tend to be like a Rorschach test. You see what you want to see in them. Some people find the characters despicable and sometimes they find them likeable and the audience isn't given a lot of indication about what they should feel at any given point. But I think that with Baghead, if they aren't laughing and they aren't even a little bit scared, it ain't working. So there are specific things that you need to get nailed down.
RS: Do you compare notes with friends who are primarily studio film actors, to expand your knowledge base of the industry?
GG: Yeah, my boyfriend's an actor and he does a lot of theater in New York and he also does more mainstream movies and television. They get paychecks, which is a big difference, but also from what I know from other people there is a good deal of 'making the lines your own' that goes on in studio films, but they tend to be set after that. You make it your own and then they set it so they can rehearse it and stuff like that. There is some freedom there. I think in many ways, if you're doing it right it should feel just as free, as an actor. It can be difficult to find that in yourself.
RS: You mentioned money -- the lure of financial security and exposure that comes with acting must make it an easier career path to follow than playwriting. Are you still writing plays?
GG: To be honest, I haven't written a play in a year that I've gone all the way through. Playwriting has kind of taken a back seat. I actually feel bad because when I started working in films I was really intending to write plays and be a playwright, and I feel like it's kind of a disservice to people who are actually playwrights right now for me to say that I am one. I'm not, really. I want to be, but I don't think that I'll ever actually be a playwright in the way that [with] some people, that's pretty much what they do. I think I'll always kind of be skirting the line like -- not that I'm as good a writer as he is -- but like Kenneth Lonergan, people who write for a couple of days, but it's not their entire world. I think acting and writing are both things that I care about and I really try hard to keep them both in the air. Right now, writing films seems more interesting to me, because I am in this world and it does seem more vibrant to me in some ways. I'm just immersed in it. It seems like you can do really interesting things that a lot of people can see. You can self-distribute or allow people to download your film online. All of that is really cool to me.
RS: You co-wrote and co-directed Nights and Weekends, which I enjoyed. I've heard that making that was a very intense experience. Should we consider it the climax of your working relationship with Swanberg?
GG: I think for the time being, yes. He's already shot another movie and I think he's going to shoot another one really soon and I've already shot other movies. For right now, we're calling it quits. [Laughs] That was a pretty exhausting movie to make. I don't think that either of us knows what to make of one another right now. So, until there does seem to be an interesting idea that we want to explore, I think we're probably not gonna make something for a while.
RS: Did making the movie damage your relationship?
GG: Yeah, it was really damaging. We shot the first part in December, 2006, tried to edit it and realized we needed to shoot more, and then we shot the second half in December, 2007. Within that, there were many gaps of not talking and big fights ... it's hard to work with someone like that, so closely. It was incredibly unhealthy, but for some reason we're both pretty pig-headed and we kept going, even though it was probably not in our best mental health interests.
RS: Was the co-directing a source of the tension?
GG: It was more the difficulty of portraying a couple in a romantic relationship when we weren't a couple in real life and the toll that it took on our own relationships in our real life. There is no construct for what an artistic relationship looks like. I think a lot of people struggle with that. If you're friends with someone, you know how that works and if you're dating someone you know how that works, and if you're married to someone ... but if you're just in this intimate, fraught relationship of making something that necessarily involves a lot of disagreements as you're trying to produce something, where does that stand in your life? It causes a lot of problems. Ultimately, I'm really glad that people like it because it was so difficult for us to make it. It doesn't always have to be that way. I just think that Joe and I, we kind of feed the fire with each other.
RS: It's a very physical, very sexual movie. That must have created a kind of baseline of stress to begin with.
GG: Yeah, it was really stressful. I've done nude scenes a lot and I don't care -- it's not a big deal for me. I don't fault people who have a problem with it, I know that some people don't feel comfortable doing it and that is totally fine, but sex scenes are hard. When you're just naked, you're just yourself and nobody's touching you. You're just alone and it's kind of liberating. Sex scenes are the opposite of liberating. You're trying to make it real enough so that it looks real, but also it's not real and that's important, but it is really -- people are really touching you. Even though we don't have sex, obviously, your brain just goes into panic mode and you do this thing where you disassociate with your body, which is kind of traumatic. You're like, "I'm not really in my body" but I am. And I think that's why so many Hollywood movie sex scenes are so fake, because they're trying to protect their actors and they're trying to choreograph it so that you can sort of believe that disassociation that's going on in your head and just be like, "This is choreography."
RS: Do you have any plans to direct something on your own?
GG: I'm going to direct my own web show solo. I'm gonna make five five-minute episodes at the end of August this year that I'm writing and directing and I'm gonna act in. There are two ideas up in the air and I'm gonna see which one lands. One is about a very jealous girlfriend and it's about how boring it is to stalk people on the Internet. The other is called "Camping With Greta" and it's me teaching people how to camp.
RS: You spent a lot of time in the woods for Baghead -- you must have learned some lessons from that.
GG: Yeah, line your sack with a plastic bag so that the rain doesn't get in, stuff like that. And how to use a stove. It'll be informational, with a lot of interpersonal strife.
RS: Maybe you could sell it to the Boy Scouts.
GG: I know, I was thinking maybe Camping World will want to put it up on their site
Baghead is in theaters now. For more information, check out the official site.
Baghead is an attempt to mix up the formula a bit -- the 'no script, no problem' aesthetic and focus on twenty-something relationship angst is still front and center, but this time the characters occupy a genre piece, with all the rules and expectations that entails. The story begins with a group of four independent filmmakers driving to a cabin deep in the Texas woods, where they plan to hole up until inspiration strikes and they come up with a good idea for a movie. Little do they know that someone lurking outside their cabin is following a script of his own and he has ... final cut! (Cue scary music.) SuicideGirls recently sat down with Greta Gerwig in Manhattan to talk about all of her new projects, the siren call of the mainstream movie world, and camping.
Ryan Stewart: I heard a funny audio interview of you a while back, in which you were like, "Yeah, I'll continue acting, as long as I can write my own dialogue and do whatever I want."
Greta Gerwig: That particular thing that I said, I look back and I'm like, "What was I talking about?" I was in this very specific mind-frame where I was like, "I only want to do one thing." Ultimately, though, it's pretty boring to only do one thing. Also, I think that as somebody who does these improvisational movies, you run out of ideas at some point, or who you are is kind of limited. I think that doing different kinds of acting and working with different people kind of feeds the well, so that when I do improv again, I've got more "stuff." To just constantly be running your mouth seems pointless.
RS: Do you feel like you can only play shades of Greta in a loosely structured mumblecore film?
GG: I actually think Baghead is a good example [where] they let me make a whole character. She's nothing like me. I get to dress her and make her talk and make her totally different and that was really fun. I think it really depends on the kind of filmmaker I'm working with. Some filmmakers are like, "Just be yourself, and some filmmakers are more like, "Here's the kind of person I want, see what you can do with it." Certainly working with Joe [Swanberg], it tends to be versions of yourself. With other people, it's been completely leftfield.
RS: You've never had an experience yet of a director standing over you and being like, "No, that's not how Amelia Earhart would act!"
GG: I've never played anyone yet who has actually had an existence separate from me. But like, Yeast, that I did with Mary Bronstein, that character is completely not me and totally strange. All of us played people totally different from ourselves, although it was all improvised.
RS: Did the Baghead directors bring you on board as more of a collaborator or were they hiring you strictly as an actress?
GG: I would say they were hiring me to be an actress in the movie, but they also really do encourage improvisation and all of that, so it was kind of a mix and match of what they wanted out of Greta. They wanted me to execute their ideas, but also to bring new stuff to the table when they needed me to.
RS
id you think you were going to be making a straight-up horror film?
GG: Well, the original script read like a horror film, much more so because Mark and Jay are big structure people. The structure of the script moved, it read like horror -- especially the second half of it -- but then when we got there it became pretty apparent that Mark and Jay were interested in the same things they're always interested in, which is what I'm interested in, which is really small, awkward interactions. So once we were making it, it felt less like that. Also, nobody really knew what they were doing.
RS: In a bad way?
GG: No, in an interesting way. I had never been in a horror film and they had never made anything that was supposed to be scary, so at any given moment we never really knew what was scary and what was just silly. It was a lot of hit and miss. So, we had to do some scenes tons of times because we didn't know what would work and what wouldn't.
RS: Did that extend even to shooting alternate endings, things like that?
GG: No, not alternate endings. By the time we got to the ending ... we knew what the ending would be. Just in terms of, 'Is it scary to show somebody's face when they're running away from somebody, or is it scary to show the ground?' We didn't know, so there were just a lot of tight things and we just did it again and again.
RS: Would you have been comfortable if there had been more in the way of violence?
GG: Yeah, sure. I just did an actual horror film called The House of the Devil.
RS: The one with Dee Wallace, right?
GG: Yeah, and in that one actually my head is blown off, but it was really fun. So yeah, I would have been fine with that, but the Duplasses were interested in making something that was not gory at all. They were interested in making something that's actually what it looks like when people are scared, that kind of thing.
RS: Going from a mumblecore horror film to a more traditional horror film -- is it like two different worlds?
GG: I can see how it looks like two worlds from the outside. I met Ti West, who directed it, at SXSW [through mutual friends]. I feel that mumblecore is a really loose term and every time people talk about it they talk about a new set of movies. The truth is that most of these people are just friends and it has nothing to do with the kind of films that they make. Ti makes totally different films than the Duplasses, so in my mind it's one continuous thing of friendship and filmmakers, but I can see how it looks separate.
RS: Joe Swanberg has talked about the theories that inform his filmmaking, like the notion that having a tight script hinders performance, and so on. Do you subscribe to the same set of rules, more or less?
GG: Having now done things for two years and working with different kinds of directors, I feel like it's really what kind of movie you want to make and what kind of story you want to tell. If you're going to make a completely improvised, loose-limbed piece without a lot of plot structure then it wouldn't serve you to have a script, but I think Mark and Jay needed to have a script and needed to know what they're going to do.
RS: It's a genre movie, with rules.
GG: Yeah, it's a genre movie and it's also balancing so many different tones. As a whole, mumblecore movies tend to be like a Rorschach test. You see what you want to see in them. Some people find the characters despicable and sometimes they find them likeable and the audience isn't given a lot of indication about what they should feel at any given point. But I think that with Baghead, if they aren't laughing and they aren't even a little bit scared, it ain't working. So there are specific things that you need to get nailed down.
RS: Do you compare notes with friends who are primarily studio film actors, to expand your knowledge base of the industry?
GG: Yeah, my boyfriend's an actor and he does a lot of theater in New York and he also does more mainstream movies and television. They get paychecks, which is a big difference, but also from what I know from other people there is a good deal of 'making the lines your own' that goes on in studio films, but they tend to be set after that. You make it your own and then they set it so they can rehearse it and stuff like that. There is some freedom there. I think in many ways, if you're doing it right it should feel just as free, as an actor. It can be difficult to find that in yourself.
RS: You mentioned money -- the lure of financial security and exposure that comes with acting must make it an easier career path to follow than playwriting. Are you still writing plays?
GG: To be honest, I haven't written a play in a year that I've gone all the way through. Playwriting has kind of taken a back seat. I actually feel bad because when I started working in films I was really intending to write plays and be a playwright, and I feel like it's kind of a disservice to people who are actually playwrights right now for me to say that I am one. I'm not, really. I want to be, but I don't think that I'll ever actually be a playwright in the way that [with] some people, that's pretty much what they do. I think I'll always kind of be skirting the line like -- not that I'm as good a writer as he is -- but like Kenneth Lonergan, people who write for a couple of days, but it's not their entire world. I think acting and writing are both things that I care about and I really try hard to keep them both in the air. Right now, writing films seems more interesting to me, because I am in this world and it does seem more vibrant to me in some ways. I'm just immersed in it. It seems like you can do really interesting things that a lot of people can see. You can self-distribute or allow people to download your film online. All of that is really cool to me.
RS: You co-wrote and co-directed Nights and Weekends, which I enjoyed. I've heard that making that was a very intense experience. Should we consider it the climax of your working relationship with Swanberg?
GG: I think for the time being, yes. He's already shot another movie and I think he's going to shoot another one really soon and I've already shot other movies. For right now, we're calling it quits. [Laughs] That was a pretty exhausting movie to make. I don't think that either of us knows what to make of one another right now. So, until there does seem to be an interesting idea that we want to explore, I think we're probably not gonna make something for a while.
RS: Did making the movie damage your relationship?
GG: Yeah, it was really damaging. We shot the first part in December, 2006, tried to edit it and realized we needed to shoot more, and then we shot the second half in December, 2007. Within that, there were many gaps of not talking and big fights ... it's hard to work with someone like that, so closely. It was incredibly unhealthy, but for some reason we're both pretty pig-headed and we kept going, even though it was probably not in our best mental health interests.
RS: Was the co-directing a source of the tension?
GG: It was more the difficulty of portraying a couple in a romantic relationship when we weren't a couple in real life and the toll that it took on our own relationships in our real life. There is no construct for what an artistic relationship looks like. I think a lot of people struggle with that. If you're friends with someone, you know how that works and if you're dating someone you know how that works, and if you're married to someone ... but if you're just in this intimate, fraught relationship of making something that necessarily involves a lot of disagreements as you're trying to produce something, where does that stand in your life? It causes a lot of problems. Ultimately, I'm really glad that people like it because it was so difficult for us to make it. It doesn't always have to be that way. I just think that Joe and I, we kind of feed the fire with each other.
RS: It's a very physical, very sexual movie. That must have created a kind of baseline of stress to begin with.
GG: Yeah, it was really stressful. I've done nude scenes a lot and I don't care -- it's not a big deal for me. I don't fault people who have a problem with it, I know that some people don't feel comfortable doing it and that is totally fine, but sex scenes are hard. When you're just naked, you're just yourself and nobody's touching you. You're just alone and it's kind of liberating. Sex scenes are the opposite of liberating. You're trying to make it real enough so that it looks real, but also it's not real and that's important, but it is really -- people are really touching you. Even though we don't have sex, obviously, your brain just goes into panic mode and you do this thing where you disassociate with your body, which is kind of traumatic. You're like, "I'm not really in my body" but I am. And I think that's why so many Hollywood movie sex scenes are so fake, because they're trying to protect their actors and they're trying to choreograph it so that you can sort of believe that disassociation that's going on in your head and just be like, "This is choreography."
RS: Do you have any plans to direct something on your own?
GG: I'm going to direct my own web show solo. I'm gonna make five five-minute episodes at the end of August this year that I'm writing and directing and I'm gonna act in. There are two ideas up in the air and I'm gonna see which one lands. One is about a very jealous girlfriend and it's about how boring it is to stalk people on the Internet. The other is called "Camping With Greta" and it's me teaching people how to camp.
RS: You spent a lot of time in the woods for Baghead -- you must have learned some lessons from that.
GG: Yeah, line your sack with a plastic bag so that the rain doesn't get in, stuff like that. And how to use a stove. It'll be informational, with a lot of interpersonal strife.
RS: Maybe you could sell it to the Boy Scouts.
GG: I know, I was thinking maybe Camping World will want to put it up on their site
Baghead is in theaters now. For more information, check out the official site.
erin_broadley:
Greta Gerwig made her first appearance in a mumblecore film by phone, sending in voicemails and camera-phone photos to represent her off-screen character in director Joe Swanberg's 2006 dramedy LOL. Since then, the flaxen haired 24-year-old has become the unofficial face of the movement, starring...