Oh God, haha.
Yeah. He wants to be with Natalie Portman, so he writes a part for them to be that person and hear Natalie Portman say that they love them. That person has to kiss them because it’s in the script. So I always kind of felt like Keith (Poulson) was my Natalie. So, I felt a lot of anxiety about it. So, Chase wrote the first scenes where Keith propositions me. Because Chase saw me as a sexual object, it allowed me to see myself as a sexual object without feeling the guilt of narcissism.
Wow, I never thought about this in that way. That’s interesting. I wanted to know because you do a lot of directing, producing, and everything. I wanted to know how being a producer informs directing something.
I think it gives you a definite sense of realism of what’s doable with many crew, many sets, many moves. So, I think it helps. You’re always thinking like a New World screenwriter. Like Roger Corman’s New World company. Basically, always thinking that way. Where you’re not writing some Christopher Nolan setpiece or a masturbatory one-take Steadicam shot that’s gonna eat up your whole day and get you two pages. It’s not enough. So I think it makes you think that way. In some ways, I’m worried that it’s given me a poverty mentality. Where I think of myself as always living under restricted resources. I’m not thinking big enough. That feeling of people who grew up during the great depression who are scarred and then they end up hoarding. I kind of feel like that sometimes.
“This is the real problem for murderers, they have second thoughts and doubts, and remorse…”
There’s this other movie that you talk about in the film you were going to make, The Young Ambassadors. Is that grounded in reality at all?
That was my experience with my first manager. After Kiss, Kiss, Finger Bang won the award at SXSW in the Midnight Shorts section. I got signed to a manager at a relatively big management company. One that represents a lot of genre people and people in the comic book space. I pitched this whole movie idea that I had for a script that was updating Henry James’ The Ambassadors. Instead of young Americans abroad in Europe and shining a light on the American sensibility and its evolution since its European pilgrimage, it would do the same for American Jews and the difference between them and Israelis. The sense of guilt that ties one to the other and the politics which are seemingly at odds, but always get preserved in a Real Politique sense of guilt.
He was totally into it. He loved it. He loved the pitch and was like, “Go write it!” Then, like six months later, I sent him the draft. I don’t hear anything. Then one day, I get a call from him, and he’s like, “I read it,” and basically verbatim says what he says in the movie. Like, “It’s really great, but the main character, she’s just not very likable. I just don’t know who would want something like this. It’s just because Israel is very political.” I was like, “Yes.” I just couldn’t believe that it took him four months to read it and then decide to fire me. I guess we fired each other. Because he was like, “I don’t think this is working.” Then, literally, as it happens in the movie, I said, “Well, if you don’t like it, I don’t think we’re ever going to find something that works.” Certainly, I wasn’t very high up on the food chain. Still, I definitely thought that what he did in terms of dragging his heels and basically admitting that he didn’t know what to do with something I had pitched him verbatim, then wrote verbatim…it seemed like he didn’t really know what he was doing.
It was a blessing in disguise. Obviously, I didn’t need a manager at that point in my career. It was not necessary. Then, eventually, I met my current manager Mette-Marie (Kongsved), one of the film producers. She was on the jury that gave me the award at SXSW. So, when she went out on her own and formed her own management/production company with Laura Tunstall, I was the first client she signed. That was a match made in heaven. Because I knew that she really did love my work and supported it, they all produced I Blame Society. They just gave 110% to it and 110% to me, professionally and emotionally.
"…You can't have a film financed by a multi-national corporation encouraging people to burn down credit card companies"
