With her discomforting new psychological thriller Always Shine premiering as part of the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, filmmaker Sophia Takal has already drawn comparisons to Brian De Palma, David Lynch, and even Ingmar Bergman with her new film. Yet, reviews of Always Shine that point to the film’s central pair of femme fatale-style blondes or the voyeuristic lens it applies to its actresses overlook a significant quality of Takal’s 2nd feature. “I don’t really know that there are a lot of movies about female friendships that ring true to me,” she begins during an early interview one morning in Midtown. “At least none that I’ve seen that I can think of right now.”

The tension in Always Shine is fueled by the mutual envy between its leads Anna (Mackenzie Davis) and Beth (Caitlin FitzGerald) best friends who decide to rebuild their broken bond by spending a weekend together in Big Sur. More than just spending time with one another, the trip is a chance for both actresses to escape how the outside world views them, as well as the roles—both personal and professional—in which they feel trapped. As the two old friends reconnect, their underlying resentment for one another turns their vacation into an anxiety nightmare with dangerous consequences.

In her sit-down interview with Way Too Indie during Tribeca, Always Shine director Sophia Takal discusses the competitive jealousy that inspired her film, the thematic importance of having female characters portray actresses, and how Always Shine helped the filmmaker come to terms with the competing aspects of her own personality.

Always Shine was written by your husband [screenwriter Lawrence Michael Levine, who also plays Jesse in the film], were you part of the initial development of this idea?
Sophia Takal: I came up with a tiny seed of the idea of wanting to make a movie about my own struggles with fitting into a normal idea of femininity. I made a movie called Green, and right after that movie came out something got triggered in me where I felt insanely competitive with all my friends—actor friends, director friends – and I was sabotaging those relationships. I was filled with all this rage and I was so angry.

I was taught that the right way to be a woman was to be shy and deferential—to not take up too much space—but I felt so big and bossy and aggressive and I just felt so bad about myself. It was creating this very violent conflict within me, and Larry was sort of just watching me unravel, go totally crazy and alienate everyone around me. We started talking a little bit about how I was feeling. I always gravitate toward making movies about really personal things.

I started talking to other women about saying “I really don’t feel like a woman, I don’t feel like I’m doing a good job at this,” and they would say “I don’t feel that way either.” I realized that it wasn’t just specific to me, but maybe there was a little bit more of a universal struggle that we were experiencing as women. So I wrote a one-page outline of ideas for how I could make it into a movie.

Larry really connected with these feelings. He had felt [competitive] towards me, [like] I was feeling towards other people. He had similar feelings about not fitting into the typical masculine roles of being really, really rich, and really, really powerful, and not emotional, and not crying. He said, “I felt a similar alienation from the set of expectations of my gender and I think that we could do something really interesting.” He’s an incredible writer, a much better writer than I am. So I just trusted him to create a script based on our shared set of experiences.

We did think it was important to address femininity rather than [make it] about a man. He read a lot of feminist books about female archetypes. There’s this one really great book called “Down From the Pedestal” [by Maxine Harris], which was all about different female archetypes and how women fit into them. He read books about celebrity obsession, “Fame Junkies” [by Jake Halpern] and “Gods Like Us” [by Ty Burr]. A lot about feminism and celebrity.

So that increased attention to your careers was a part of the inspiration, as well?
Definitely. Larry and I both got very career-obsessed. Just striving, grasping, not being satisfied with anything we had. Really feeling that our self-worth was bound up in this idea that we needed to become famous. And I feel like we just fell prey to what our society tells us, where celebrities are the new gods. It’s hard to feel valuable in a society that tells you that the most valuable people are these tall, beautiful men and women. It’s a bummer.

I was talking with Andrew Kevin Walker, who wrote Nerdland, about this desperation from the fringes of the entertainment industry. The tangible aspects of modern fame, I think, makes it seem not so out of grasp, which can drive you insane if you’re in that periphery.
Yeah. Also, because a lot of people are famous for no reason. The act of getting famous is a focus, rather than the act of creating and fame [coming] as a byproduct of that. It seems to have taken people over more and more. I talked with Mackenzie and Caitlin about that a lot. That when you become an actor you become an actor because you want to create something and enter this secret space where you’re connecting with someone. Then the weird by-product of being successful at that and getting to work is being pigeonholed into these tinier and tinier boxes.

[You] go to fashion shows and wear makeup and it’s not at all to do with why you started wanting to be an artist. A lot of business type people in the industry convince you that that’s essential in order to be an artist. Especially with actors. The less you know about an actor, the better the experience watching them work is going to be because you don’t have all the baggage. This internet age where you know everything about everyone is especially bad for everyone. Who’s someone really famous?

Ben Affleck.
Ben Affleck, yeah!

We spent a whole two years saying, “He doesn’t look like Batman.”
There’s just so much stuff, yeah. Like, “He had an affair with his baby sitter,” or whatever.

The femininity aspects in the film are really interesting, too. Particularly relating to the whole duality of these characters, balancing, “is this who I am?” with, “is this who I want to be?”
Definitely. To me, thematically, those are two sides of one woman. The process that I’ve undergone in my life is to synthesize those two aspects, rather than feeling pulled toward feeling small, getting angry that I wasn’t that way, and getting pulled in two directions. My personal journey has been to merge those two sides to become a more whole, balanced person. To not be mad at myself for not feeling one way, or reacting another way. They are two sides of the same person. And some people may naturally gravitate towards one. But both are kind of a performance.

There is that really interesting moment when you first introducing Mackenzie’s character and it’s made to look like an audition scene. Do you feel like that desire to be a certain type of person forces us to be performative in real life?

Yeah, I can only speak to my experience. But I feel like I’m performing all the time. Interacting with people is a negotiation. And I think as a woman, you’re taught how to perform to get what you need. Like, to seduce, or all these [prompts] that you could give to an actor at any time in a scene.

I think that was true, and that’s something we wanted to hone in on in the movie. And that’s why we used a lot of alienation and breaking of the fourth wall techniques, too, to remind people it’s not just actors who perform. It’s all of us who perform in our everyday lives and are choosing to present something to the world, [something] that’s been fed to us, rather than [present] who we really are.

To literalize some of that conflict by making them both actresses, was that something you debated at any point or was that there from the beginning?
It was always going to be actors in my mind. Mainly, because I started as an actor, so I really related to that. Then, a couple of producers and money people said, “Does it have to be actors? Because that’s not so accessible,” but I disagree. Birdman won an Oscar.

I always said, “No, it has to be actors.” I could never really articulate exactly why. And then this one filmmaker named Elisabeth Subrin has this really awesome blog called “Who Cares About Actresses?” And she articulates it so well, so I’m kind of just copying what she says. But it says that actresses represent to women what women are supposed to be. So when you choose how to portray a woman by picking an actress, you’re just telling women how to behave.

And then they become these archetypal figures.
Yeah, they’re just like tools to pigeonhole. I wanted to play around a lot with how actresses are used, which is why one thing I was excited about when I came onto it was obscuring the nudity. Almost showing them naked so that the audience would feel in their bodies that they wanted to see them naked and have to confront that feeling. Or obscuring the violence was another thing. I don’t know if this is the reaction people had, but it would be so cool if people were like, “Why can’t I see her kill her?!” and then get frustrated and say, “Why do I want to see her kill her?”

It’s that thing where you’re sort of seeking an answer that you already know. I found myself sitting there waiting to see a death scene but also knowing I didn’t need it. That’s a weird impulse.
Yeah, I just thought it might be interesting for people to sit with their desires rather than being given everything.

What were some of your visual influences? The quick splicing of scenes, the unsettling, disorienting style was really engaging and disorienting.
Mark Schwartzbard shot the movie and we watched Three Women like eight or nine times, and Images, the Robert Altman movie. We bought this 1960s zoom lens that was totally unused off of eBay, which was really cool. That was the only one we used for the whole movie.

Then Zach Clark edited it, and I had shown him a couple minutes of something that I had cut myself. I said, “I really want this to be weird and unsettling but I have no idea what to do.” Then he cut the opening credit sequence first and I was like, “Oh yeah, do that always, everywhere in the movie.” He kind of just brought the blinky, splicy stuff to me, and I thought it was amazing. He’s the one kind of responsible for more of the avant-garde elements. Seeing the slates – all those things – he added a whole other layer to the film. He really found visual ways to make it interesting.

A lot of what’s happening on-screen is not that unsettling or strange, but it’s the presentation of it – whether it’s the score or just that interstitching – that makes it so tense. Particularly, the scene where they’re running lines together.
Yeah, it’s so cool, they were really good!

Were you deliberately looking to make seemingly smaller moments play big?
Yes, definitely. My first movie, Green, I was also playing around with elements of genre, but it wasn’t as much of a genre movie. And this I really wanted to make it a psychological thriller, but I still wanted to root it in naturalism and [keep it] performance-driven. So all the choices we made with shooting was to make it as scary as possible

Same with music and editing. And I got really lucky with the actors because I love single-take scenes and they were so talented that we didn’t need to cut a performance. They were just able to do it on set. Not cutting away in certain tense moments built more tension, so I was really glad to be able to have that.

How did Mackenzie and Caitlin get involved? Did you seek them out?
They both came to me through agents and casting directors in the more traditional way. We cast Mackenzie first, and she just really understood Anna, understood the script. I was really excited and I was a huge fan of her work. Caitlin’s agent reached out to me, I was also a huge fan of her work. They were the two women that I spoke to that totally understood the script backwards and forwards, and had clear, specific ideas for their characters.

For me, as the director, casting is essential. Part of the way I decide to cast someone, I choose the person who I think is going to need the least amount of help. For everyone in the cast and crew, I just want everyone who can do their job so I stay out of the way. That’s a big part of what I was looking for. People who really understand this material, people who were willing to come out with me into the woods, work with a really small crew, do the weird hippy new-agey warm-ups I insist on doing and the meditation. People who feel that this is an important movie to make with important themes. Not just people who say “Oh I get to have the lead in an indie.” There was a lot of trust between the three of us that really moved me. It was really exciting and cool. It was the first time I worked with actresses that I didn’t have a relationship with before.

I was wondering if at any point you had considered casting either of them in the opposite role.
No.

It was clear from the start?
It was clear from the start. Yeah.

You’re a multi-hyphenate, actress being one of them. Was there any point where you thought you might be in this film?
At the very beginning when I gave Larry that one page I was like, “let’s just go into Big Sur and improvise a movie.” And he was like, “No, this could be better than that,” And I said, “I’m only going to give up my part if I find someone who I think can do a better job than me.” Then I did. And the role is so intense and aggressive that in order to inhabit that space I would be a terribly mean director.

The process was really important to me. Not knowing what was going to happen to a tiny independent film, I just focused on making sure that making this movie was as fulfilling as possible for everyone involved and that we learn and grow as a group and as individuals through this one month. So I thought that I could facilitate this kind of energetic whatever by being just a director. And it was so much easier than acting and directing. I acted in my first movie. Part of what’s fun about acting is losing yourself in the moment, but if you’re directing too, you can’t.

So you prefer to focus your energy in that way?
I think I do now.

Are you planning any other projects now?
Yeah, I have a script ready, but still not really big. But it’s more of a light dramedy. It will be an interesting shift to move away from these genre elements and focus more on like real life. I definitely don’t want to get pigeonholed as a genre director. Someone talked to me after the movie and said, “There are so few female genre directors, you could really make a big career out of it, do studio stuff,” and I was like, “Uh, I don’t know.”

That to me seems weird, I don’t like genre movies more than any other movies. For me, the through-line with all my ideas is that I’m talking about issues that women have that they’re maybe ashamed to acknowledge publicly. It can spark a dialogue and make them feel less alone, and I don’t think it needs to be any particular genre to do that.

One of the very interesting things about Always Shine is that it does talk about jealousy between friends in a way people tend to not acknowledge or not want to acknowledge, at least. Have you thought about why it’s so difficult to confront?
Do you have that feeling with other male friends?

I think I do. For me, it’s about relative positions in life. And certain people get, like, a nice apartment, or a nice promotion. It’s like a milestone type of thing.
Yeah, I guess I could go deep into an anti-capitalism rant right now. I think it’s the nature of capitalism to have a scarcity mentality and to feel like there’s not enough to go around for everyone. I think that’s particularly true about actresses. That’s another reason I think it’s a cool career to give these two characters. There’s one part and one person can get it.

And it’s not necessarily about talent or anything.
Yeah, I really think that’s true for everyone, I think that that’s a big problem with this society’s obsession with money and power.

It’s an unflattering obsession to have.
Yeah, and then it’s embarrassing. The reason I asked you about men was because with women there’s a huge emphasis on perfection and quietness and not challenging, and so that’s why I was wondering if that was why we don’t like to talk about it, but I don’t know. If everyone feels that way then I don’t know what it is.

Maybe it is just the sense of acknowledging that you don’t feel good enough or you haven’t accomplished enough.
Right. Because everyone’s performing, so you want to create this image of success or having it all together and not being jealous. But then it’s eating away at you inside, making you go crazy, and all of the sudden you’re screaming and crying in the post office. Just like, “Why can’t you give me my package without an ID?!” That didn’t actually happen.

It’s a metaphorical post office.
But I did really shove my boyfriend’s manager because he called me a primadonna. So [the movie’s] based on real life.

Transcription assistance from Jason Gong

As a Brit who lived for many years in Spain before coming to America during New York City Football Club’s inaugural season, documentarian Justin Webster’s background mirrors that of many of the players on Major League Soccer team rosters. Benefiting from his personal connection to the City Football Group, as well as some fortunate timing, Webster found himself preparing to start a new vérité-style film project right as City were ready to announce their entry into America’s 20-year-old soccer league. Yet, the final result of Win! is about as far from PR promotional product as one could imagine. Using unprecedented access to locker rooms, player retreats and board rooms, Justin Webster’s new documentary gives an intimate look into the lives and struggles of a professional soccer organization going through the ups and downs of its founding.

In his sit down interview with Way Too Indie from the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, Win! director Justin Webster talks about getting access to world-renowned superstars like David Villa and Frank Lampard, the challenge of vérité-style documentary filmmaking, and making calculations about how much information to make explicit.

How embedded did you want to become in this process? How day-to-day was your involvement following the birth of NYCFC?
Justin Webster: For viable, practical reasons, and budget reasons, we couldn’t follow the whole thing for a year and a half every day. So we had about four and a half months of filming and I had to choose when to go. It was spread out to try to capture the twists, stories and the characters. Sometimes things happen that needs to get covered by somebody else. But as this style of filming isn’t that easy to do, that was a challenge, too. So to get somebody else to film while we weren’t there wasn’t the ideal situation. My production team is highly trained and highly skilled in this kind of filming.

The vérité style really lends a really immersive aspect to Win! It gives an unfiltered look at professional athletes that isn’t often on display. Was it tricky to coordinate, or to get these athletes to open up and allow themselves to curse or say something off-color on camera?
Sure. There’s a whole art to this observational filming, done well. Part of it is explaining very carefully and then filming an awful lot. Because when they trust you and they ignore you, then you’re in the position to start getting some real scenes.

And you may not [get good footage], you may be filming for hours and hours and hours and nothing gets into the cut. The team filming has to be on the same level of attention the whole time. When it comes to the players, we got along very well. They very, very graciously ignored us.

And enough to get some of those really candid, interesting moments that anyone interested in the sport wants to see. Those little interactions between a coach and a player or a coach and a manager aren’t normally for public consumption. Was part of your interest in capturing those moments that might seem minor but reveal bits of personality?
I couldn’t put it better myself, in fact. People ask me, “What was the message of the film?” and in a way the message of the film was the style. You see what you think you know, but you don’t really know until you see it. It’s like they’re acting. They’re not acting, but if an actor glances one way, or twitches some way, or looks up, it becomes much more revealing. You see everything in a slightly different light. It’s like actually being there, and that’s stimulating for you to think about what you thought you knew. I think you put it better. Those little details can be very revealing.

There’s a version of this movie that could be made where you explain the MLS rules of the expansion draft, or the protected players clauses; however, a lot of it is left for the viewer to piece together. How much of a calculation is that for you? Explaining the complexities of a world without become bogged down by those intricacies?
Well, that’s a really interesting point when it comes to making film. You need to tell enough that it’s not confusing, but if you start telling too much it becomes boring. Things like the expansion draft, even Claudio and Jason when we interviewed them said, “I’m not sure we can explain it completely,” it’s so complicated. You just have to know enough so you’re not confused. So you know the in expansion draft they’re competing to get some players, actually American players. That’s the important thing.

I’m hoping, and it was a calculation, you’re right, that I put in the right layer of information so that it helps the story, because there is a storyline about how this is the tipping point of soccer in the US, for instance, and the pressures around that.

You pick up that this is this post-World Cup wave, but it’s only a few clips in the actually movie where we see them. Is that something you decide to include in post or is this something you feel you have a natural felt would be part of the story?
I have a boring, kind of [mantra] I repeat again and again. I always say that you have to have two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time and still maintain the ability to function, which is a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald. The two ideas are, “this is the script,” “there is no script.” So you start off with an idea. And so those sort of ideas about the World Cup and where we were, I think they’re always there.

Of course, just a little is enough. Threading in the right level of information, the longer cuts were around 2.5 hours. I started editing fairly early on. It’s a process. With any luck you end up with everything in the right kind of proportion.

You mentioned that you lived in Spain, and you get some really great access with David Villa in the documentary. Was your ability to speak with him or relate to him part of what facilitated getting some of those honest, revealing moments where you see him frustrated with his inability to communicate?
I think so. It’ll be very interesting to see what he says. It wasn’t necessarily easy to film closely with anybody, and he opened up steadily. The fact that we speak Spanish – not just me but the director of photography, my assistant director and producer, the sound person, we’re all bilingual Spanish-English. We talked a lot with David’s father, as well, when he came to training sessions. I think it all helped; building trust like that was essential.

With her background as the star and creator of Pulling, as well as her other work British TV shows, Sharon Horgan has become a recognizable face on British television; however, her latest show Catastrophe marks her first with an American audience. The Channel 4 / Amazon Studios co-production dropped its entire second season earlier in April, picking up years after the drama of the first season, with Rob and Sharon (the show’s co-creators Horgan & Rob Delaney share first names with their characters) married and struggling to raise two children. Both seasons of the Catastrophe are not only hysterically funny, they’re warm and optimistic in a way that runs counter to many cynical, modern TV comedies.

In her short interview with Way Too Indie on the red carpet for Catastrophe‘s panel at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, Sharon Horgan discusses the advantage television has when developing romantic comedies, the importance of making a show that was more than just gags, and why it’s better to just laugh at Rob’s jokes on screen.

Romantic comedies in film haven’t been quite as popular this decade as they were in the past; however, the first season of your show Catastrophe, as well as several others on TV right now, function as really successful romantic comedies. Do you think romantic comedies function better in that episodic format rather than in film?

I guess it does but it’s also easier to make a romantic comedy because you’re not pandering to a huge audience. I think a lot of romantic comedy in film is aimed at a massive audience, so you’ve got to tick a lot of boxes and please a lot of people. The only people we had to please [on Catastrophe] were ourselves.

Also, we never thought about it as a romantic comedy so we weren’t trying to fit it into a formula. I think that can sometimes be the problem with romantic comedy in film. It has to hit all [those] beats.

We had an easy job. I think it’s harder on film but it’d be fun to have a go.

You and Rob Delaney have a delightful chemistry on the show, even small details like laughing at one another’s jokes really illustrates the healthy dynamic between your characters as a couple.

Yeah, I mean it is a bit of a cheat because it’s easier to laugh when someone says something funny on film than not laugh. But also, the big thing about the characters and why they like each other is because they find each other funny. Any romance or relationship is generally – apart from sex – based on someone who makes you laugh.

We thought it was really, really important that even in season two, even when they’re in the deep quagmires of marriage that they still made each other laugh. It just felt like more of an honest representation. I don’t think anyone tells anyone a joke in real life and they meet it with a frozen face.

But that is something you’re consciously making sure is a part of the dynamic?

Sure, but also it’s easier to do it that way. It’s easier when Rob says something funny to just laugh.

Your characters face adversity, different ups and down on the show, but it retains a hopefulness throughout. Was that something you wanted to be part of Catastrophe from the onset or did that come from writing the show?

It was really important from the outset. I think we both got to a point in our lives where we felt like we didn’t just want to make a show with a load of gags. We wanted it to be saying something and to hit all those spots. So that people who are watching feel that we’re invested in them and therefore they’ll invest in us. None of it’s easy. Having kids isn’t easy. Being married isn’t easy and we kind of wanted to tell people that things can be ok. All these terrible, shitty things can happen to you but there’s quite often a light at the end of the tunnel, and you’ll get through it.

I think comedy is just such a brilliant medium for that. It’s so great to be able to talk about serious subjects through making people laugh.

Feeling oddly jealous—and embarrassed about that jealousy—when her sister was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Sophie Goodhart began developing a story about a tense sibling relationship largely built around resentment. That inspiration led to her 2003 short film My Blind Brother, which at the time seemed like a launching point for her smooth transition into feature filmmaking. “Since then I’ve had three or four films green-lit, ready to go, and then something happened,” Sophie laments from the Tribeca Film Festival. Her new feature-length directorial debut, also titled My Blind Brother, has been a long time coming, but the version Sophie finally got to make comes with a standout cast.

In her interview with Way Too Indie, My Blind Brother writer / director Sophie Goodhart discusses the long path to production for her debut, spending her option money too quickly, and the benefits of working with longtime friends like Nick Kroll, Adam Scott, and Jenny Slate.

I wanted to ask you about the film’s journey into development because this is a story that’s personal to you, but it’s also a movie that was based on a short film that you had directed.
Sophie Goodhart: Yeah, [the idea started with] my sister being diagnosed with M.S. [multiple sclerosis] when I was in my early twenties. I was sort of embarrassed and kind of surprised to find that I was feeling kind of jealous—and really embarrassed by my jealousy—about the fact that I knew that she was always going to be this incredible hero that battled against great misfortune. So that’s where the short came from.

I got incredibly lucky and worked with three great actors—Tony Hale, John Mattey and Marsha Dietlein—in the original. The short kind of got me agents, and got me certain contacts. Immediately I got these films optioned, and I was like, “Look at me, I’m about to really do it!” I had parties where I bought lots of people drinks where I celebrated my success. Unfortunately, I was, like, way, way, way too soon. I realized that was an expensive mistake to make.

Since then I’ve had three or four films greenlit, ready to go, and then something happened. 2008 happened, everyone needed their money and you couldn’t make films. Or one of the actors leaves and I can’t find a replacement or you couldn’t spend a certain budget on the film. I was writing something completely separate from [My Blind Brother], and was just focused on the Jenny Slate character—about a woman who was going out with this guy who gets killed by a bus just after she’s dumped him. She feels terrible, she kind of hates herself and finds herself on a weird path where she would have been a tragic victim and instead she was just a cruel ex-girlfriend. I realized that her story fit really, really well with this other story so I put them together in this feature. I had to wait around for the perfect cast, the perfect three people, who would mean that I could get over a million to shoot the movie.

There’s a way to interpret the logline of this movie as a broad, Mr. Magoo-style comedy, but your movie stays very tethered to reality. Was there an impulse to go broader or do you prefer to keep your writing grounded?
SG: I always write about things I’m feeling, or worrying about, or have experienced in one way or another. You know, I could research the whole world, or a new environment or a new job, but to have that kind of basic character issue that I’m not connected to I think would make it difficult. I think that the fact that it’s based on some of these feelings that I’ve had, meant that it could [depict] a mean-spirited aspect of humanity. Because it wasn’t just an outsider looking in and mocking it. It was something familiar that I felt and believed.

You had mentioned your three lead actors came aboard as a kind of package. How did you get Jenny Slate, Adam Scott, and Nick Kroll all become involved?
SG: It’s one of those things where you never know which people you meet in your life are going to be the ones to make things happen. It turned out that Sharon Jackson at William Morris Endeavor really connected to the movie, and she had confidence in it. She had enough power to make connections to these people. But I didn’t know that when I initiated talking to her. I wasn’t like, “This is the woman that’s gonna package it.”

The three people who kind of made it happen were my initial producer, Tori, who found the short film. That was reassuring and good news for people doing shorts is that [making them] actually can make a huge difference. Somebody can like it, and they can mention you to try and help you get a feature. Then, Sharon; it’s not often in big agent’s interests to put their time into small films—and this kind of a low budget indie film—but she took a fancy to it and sent it to these bigger actors. Finally, Tyler Davidson saw [our cast], read the script and was like, “Fine, I’m happy to give you a bit more money” than he originally would have been inclined to. It just takes so many happy accidents to get off the ground. And it took such a long time. I felt like I was ready for those happy accidents.

Sometimes it can feel fated in a way.
SG: Yeah, I think after 13 years sitting in my kitchen writing I was like, “oh my god.” It was only hardcore delusion and denial that has meant that I made this because any other human would have just thought, “fuck this, it’s not working.”

What was it like for Jenny Slate and Nick Kroll—who have worked together several times before—and to work with them on developing a romantic dynamic, especially one that is played pretty straight throughout?
SG: With Jenny and Nick and Adam, you just get this unbelievable mix of people who are so intelligent and so good at acting. So nimble about playing jokes and playing them so straight or so small, that they can do pretty much anything. When they read this script, they knew that it was this romantic element, and I didn’t want to play it jokingly. I think they totally delivered. I think the fact that they’re friends meant that I didn’t have to do as much work as I might’ve. And there’s such a beautiful ease between them that I could just say, “And kiss now,” and they just were comfortable, grown-up and intelligent. They were good at acting so it was easy.

What other movies and directors did you look to for influence when putting this movie together?
SG: Two directors that I love are James L. Brooks and Elaine May. I also looked to David O. Russell and Silver Linings Playbook. Then, Knife in the Water, even though tonally it’s so weird—I love the kind of graphic quality of [Polanski’s] work. Elaine May! Her original The Heartbreak Kid is just so fucking good. So those are my inspirations, obviously.

There aren’t many professions in which asking your co-workers whether or not they’ve participated in an orgy is part of regular life, and even fewer outside of the adult film industry. Between Us filmmaker Rafael Palacio Illingworth doesn’t want to shy away from exploring sexual fantasy, as well as the disparity between those desires and reality. It’s what prompted him to appear fully naked as the lead actor in his debut feature film Macho. It’s also what inspires his deeply intimate story about a couple tempted with adultery in Between Us.

As for the filmmaker’s penchant for asking frank, sexually-skewed questions of his co-stars during their first meetings over coffee, Rafael explains that he was seeking, “an assurance that we can tell an honest story. For me, when somebody shows up and he comes with his social media in mind or publicist in mind, all these things are blocks to the story. If they have a problem with telling that truth then I have a problem.”

In Rafael Palacio Illingworth’s interview on Between Us with Way Too Indie during the Tribeca Film Festival, the filmmaker discusses the real-life spat that inspired the movie, what types of questions he peppered the actors with prior to casting, and how Mad Men helped put Ben Feldman on the director’s radar.

What lead you to the creation of Between Us?

I developed it for three years but the idea first came to me a couple years before that. I had this fight with my girlfriend, and I stormed out of the apartment – which I had never done before – and then walking I thought to myself, “What I find the perfect girl right now?”

Of course, that never happened. I came back 20 minutes after. Actually, I’m married to her now, even. It was then I realized that all these fantasies are more like an antidote for your anger than anything [else]. It’s easy to think, “If I leave you I’ll have a line of girls waiting for me.” But the reality is not that.

So that idea came a long time ago and I wanted to shoot it as an unscripted thing before having my first child – only child for now – but I didn’t have time. So then I connected with Caviar [Production Company, which also produced last year’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl] and it just organically happened from there with a script.

How did the idea mold from your writing process?

Talking about these impulses – these kinds of naïve impulses – of doing something unscripted and powerful. Usually, at that point, your ideas are like, “I’m going to do a movie about everything.” You know? [A movie] about everything that’s ever existed. QW you sit down to write the words and realize you have to translate whatever you’re feeling to something it becomes real.

I think the process was really good for the project, and really helped shape it into something because it had to become real and intimate. For example, there are these bookends of the clouds. The movie used to be called The Force, up until recently. Because it spoke about that force always wants to push us around and make you think there’s someone else around; all this temptation and desire. In early versions of the script, [this sense] came from outer space to the inner world through clouds.

I realized whatever it is, it’s between them. It’s there in that apartment where they’re sitting. In front of them, between them, no pun intended.

That [process] is what I went through for the whole script. It was a grand story that tried to talk about everything until we shaved it down to be about this intimate couple and these struggles that they have.

Right, at some point you have to hone in on your focus.

So finding that was the challenge but compared to the general structure, the script didn’t change much. It was always the story of this guy walking out of the house in a rage and then dealing with the consequences of finding this girl that he thinks is the perfect girl.

How early did you get Ben Feldman and Olivia Thirlby involved, and what made you know they’d be right for their parts?

When we went out to start casting it was very important for us to get that main couple right. First, we started going out to guys. The first person that really responded on my list of preferred guys was Ben. This was when he had just finished Mad Men, and he had done an amazing job there. He liked the script. At that moment he hadn’t done any dramatic films, he had only been in horror films.

So I found it interesting that he was not a guy who would come with his own baggage or his own brand. He responded to [the script], we met, had a nice conversation and we connected really well as friends. That was the most important thing to me because being a small movie I needed someone that I could trust that was going to help me out. Whatever that means.

I wasn’t experienced in directing A-list actors, so I also wanted to be open in expressing what I was expecting and what I was fearing. I shared all that and I realized this guy’s a friend. We barely talked about our film; it was more about, “Where do you live? What do you like?” I knew we could sit down for a coffee regardless of any movie. That was what made me think that this guy was going to be right.

After [Ben was cast] we went out for girls, and Olivia also responded [to the script]. Funny enough they hadn’t met until after they were both cast. I had the same experience with Olivia when we met. In a different way, obviously, but I also felt like she was into exploring, and helping, and being open. I realized that if they both can do this then the three of us could do it. It was risky but I think it was fine and they’re both so open and nice.

Were those conversations with the actors partially about their own views toward love or intimacy, since those feelings play such major roles in Between Us?

Yes, I think most of our conversations were about our very private lives. Look, I have nothing to lose. Everything’s on the screen. Sometimes I would just come to them and say, “How is it? You’re married. Have you ever cheated? Have you ever gone to an orgy?” It was all these things. It was kind of rushed, very quick, but it was nice. The advantage that I have is that my movies are clearly self-referential so there’s no secret. I’m not talking about a character.

Especially if you’ve seen my first feature film, which has me acting [in it] and I also get naked. That gave me a really good platform to say, “It’s not going to be as explicit as my first movie but it is in this world of honesty.” I don’t want the camera or the Hollywood desires to be in front of us telling an honest story.

So I would ask if they were okay getting naked or how okay they were with sex scenes. How not [okay they were]. Where could I go with it. I had that conversation with Ben although he had no nudity [in the movie]. It was just about knowing that if needed we will go there.

And also to know that they would be open to feeling that necessity. They could suggest it to me. Which would happen with Olivia. Sometimes I would be like, “Cover her here,” to be very proper and she would say, “Come on, it has to be real.” I expect that and those are the things I make clear from the beginning.

From their collected experiences around Hollywood, both screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker and animation director Chris Prynoski are familiar with the trappings of fame, as well as the desperation of those without it to attain it. Wearing a pair of outfits that Walker noted, “could combine for a really great Hunter S. Thompson costume,” the Nerdland creative team was at ease discussing the first feature film to emerge from animation house Titmouse, Inc. where Prynoski also helms Metalocalypse. Nerdland (read our review) takes a satirical look at a pair of ne’er do well Los Angeles roommates—aspiring actor John (Paul Rudd) and wanna’ be screenwriter Elliot (Patton Oswalt)—hung up on fantasies of making it big in the movies.

In their sit-down interview with Way Too Indie, Andrew Kevin Walker and Chris Prynoski discuss Nerdland‘s nihilistic vision of modern society, their shared appreciation for improv in moderation, and how the dream of writing the Great American novel has shifted.

What was the launching point for this story?

Andrew Kevin Walker: It was an original script I wrote and I tried in different ways to get it made. It was written to be live action – that was kind of the way I imagined it. It’s kind of loosely based on mine, and my best friend John’s life, trying to break into showbiz.

I tried to get it made as an animated TV show; I took the script and broke it down into smaller episodes then left it open-ended. Then when that didn’t happen because no one was interested, I broke it down into little five minute, bite-sized pieces that probably would have added up to one feature but they were made to be little internet shorts and that didn’t work out.

So I just regrouped again. I went back to the feature and I tightened it up. I had been watching and loving Metalocalypse and all the stuff that Titmouse, Inc. does. I’m wondering, “who are these geniuses? These mysterious weirdos who do all this amazing animation.” I managed through agents to get a meeting where I went with my script, they took a look at it, and it was a beautiful thing from there on.

Chris Prynoski: A lot of times you get these scripts and there’s a lot of work that has to be done, but this was very clear. I’ve been those people, I know those people, our studio exists in that neighborhood. It was very clear, I could see how this would worked and I was super stoked.

So the script you brought in to Titmouse was the feature version?

AKW: It was the feature version and that’s what we ended up doing. Fully independent, self-financed, sweat equity feature.

That’s despite Titmouse having not done a feature to that point?

CP: Yeah, we work on features. We do pre-production on features but our own movie that we have control over. We’ve done some direct-to-TV features but this was our first real feature that we had control over. I’m stoked, I’m really proud of it.

There’s a real nihilistic presentation to the world of these characters – is that your general perspective on society?

AKW: I think it’s exclusively about the entertainment industry and the kind of sweaty-palmed desperation you have when you’re outside looking in, trying to get in. I do think it’s interesting that in modern day society, fame can be this big (Andrew spreads his hands apart) like it always was, or fame can be this big (Andrew holds two fingers an inch away from one another). Small fame can become big fame and go back to small fame again then you really want another taste of that.

I don’t think there’s as many people looking to write the great American novel like there used to be, I think everyone’s either trying to write the great American screenplay or shoot the great American YouTube video. Looking in at Hollywood at this point is just kind of looking out at the world, in a way.

There’s a de-evolution in our popular entertainment that you can see through these characters aspirations – is that something concerning for either of you?

CP: I don’t know if it’s concerning as much as it is the way it is. It’s not like we’re trying to be like, “Hey, we’re making this important movie that’s going to change the way things work. If people just like watch this they’re going to have this revelation.” It’s more like, “Hey, this sucks, right?”

AKW: Yeah, isn’t this funny?

CP: This is the way we live. It’s funny, it’s weird. Society is obsessed with fame for fame’s sake.

AWK: Hopefully there’s a certain amount of recognition – especially for our peers. It does go beyond that now since everybody can be famous in their own way, in their smaller or larger social circle.

CP: Yeah you’ve got a phone. You can make your own YouTube video. Everybody’s got their own movie studio.

Andrew, a lot of your previous writing had been comedic but not quite so overtly comedic. You mentioned you had been working on this script for quite a while, was this your desire to do an out-and-out comedy?

AKW: I really do love comedy, I watch a lot of comedy. Humor comes into everything that you’re writing – no matter how serious or self-serious it is. I’ve written darker stuff that’s kind of balanced with comedy and this is almost a comedy that’s balanced with darkness.

Chris, when it comes to the character design, many of the characters have traditionally attractive features that get exaggerated in discomforting ways. What kind of calculation did you make to decide how far out the look of the world would be?

CP: Oh it was definitely a calculation because these days it’s kind of – in a weird way – easier to make stuff look beautiful and shiny and clean. With computers that’s the default. We made a conscious effort to make this very crunchy and rough around the edges. [Make it] feel like hand-drawn drawings. Not use a lot of the bag of tricks we use on other things like there’s no depth of field in this, there’s hardly any lighting on the characters – really just used in special circumstances – there’s not a lot of the, like, fancy stuff we use on other productions.

We really wanted to make this feel almost like films that were shot under an oxberry. You know, the production designer Antonio Canoobio, we really wanted to challenge ourselves by not going slick with it. It sounds kind of counter-intuitive.

That has its own appeal, too. It’s a distinctive look. People talk a lot about “the Adult Swin aesthetic” but it’s got its own distinctive style so it’s not so easy to just lump them all together.

CP: I think it’s more of a sensibility or a tone than an aesthetic with the Adult Swim stuff. I did the first character lineup but beyond that I pretty much handed the whole movie character-wise to Joe Bennett, who did most of the character designs. Obviously I had input on it but you see a lot of his hand there. He’s got a great mind for comedic detail. Little things you’ll notice on the characters that are really, really smart.

At what point did Paul Rudd and Patton Oswalt become involved and what did they help bring to Nerdland?

CP: Patton was the first actor of any of the actors to get involved. He had done voices for other cartoons and is a fan of Andy’s. He said yes in the room to it, which was great, and kind of had a cascade effect.

As far as stuff that those guys added… it’s interesting. The way I record, is you record the exact page, you do a loose pass and then you do an improv pass. These guys did so much incredible improve but what ended up in the film was really, largely, what the script was. There’s heightened parts where we used the imrpov but it’s all woven in to what’s there on the page.

AKW: Patton and Paul did amazing improv. Paul Scheer really stuck out to me. He was insanely amazing. Kate Micucci and Riki Lindhome in a way had such thankless parts and they made a lot of very little. But every actor did improv in great ways.

I think Chris was very judicious in choosing a balance between improv keeping the flow moving forward. I think we’ve all seen improv where you see a piece of a film get caught in an improv bubble for a minute. You’re kind of there on the day with them, appreciating that moment, and it might be a little longer than maybe [necessary] and then things get started again. So I think [Chris] was kind of great in judging stuff and choosing it very thoughtfully.

CP: Yeah it’s so easy to get caught up when you’re in the booth recording with these guys making you laugh. It’s like, “That’s great! That’s genius!” Having done Metalocalypse it happens all the time. There’s so much more than we can use in any episode. You really, really have to work hard on focusing. Not falling in love with something that is not going to work or ultimately not work as well.

AKW: It’s almost like unless you were there on the day it’s not the same. It stops the movie for a second. But that’s what blooper reels and Blu-Ray extras are for.

At some point you have to kill your darlings.

AKW: Absolutely. Or the darling has to be the thing from the script that gets taken out, and the improv goes in its place.

CP: I got to say, too, the combination of Paul and Patton – they had such good chemistry together. You really felt that these guys knew each other very well, they lived together, they were roommates. These guy were recording on opposite coasts. They could hear each other and see each other on a screen but Paul was in New York and Patton was in LA.

They made these characters likable while they were riding a dangerous line where people could have just checked out and been like, “these guys are assholes and I’m not with them anymore.”

AKW: The most embarrassing thing for me… Every actor was bringing so much more to everything that was on the page. I would be the one laughing the hardest at my own stuff I had written. To hear Patton Oswalt’s voice saying these lines after all this time living with it on the page, and then Paul Rudd and on and on from top to bottom… there’s not a lot in here by an actor or actress you don’t know.

For Rudd and Oswalt particularly they’re not even altering their voices much, it’s a lot through their natural congeniality.

AKW: And also I think it’s selling the friendship between them. It lets you keep caring about them no matter what semi-despicable things they discuss doing and attempt to do.

Is there a future for the characters of Nerdland?

AKW: That will be determined out there rather than in this room but they certainly live in my heart.

CP: I’d love to work with Andy again on something, who knows.

AKW: We’re already trying to figure out what to be able to do next together. It was just the best experience ever.

Even actors Lindsay Burdge and Arthur Martinez have trouble separating what’s real and what’s fiction from their new movie Actor Martinez. A documentary-style film ostensibly about Arthur’s life as a Denver-area actor, the plot takes a meta-narrative twist when filmmakers Nathan Silver and Mike Ott interrupt the docudrama – in several scenes with the actors – to nudge the film in more interesting directions. “You would feel like you’re authoring something,” began Lindsay, “but it’s like—I honestly don’t know to what extent they were just manipulating me into thinking I was doing these things on my own. I just don’t know.”

Arthur, supposedly the initiating force behind the movie, often appears to be the biggest subject of the filmmakers’ manipulation. Or is he helping to pull the strings alongside Mike and Nathan? In this sit-down with Way Too Indie, Actor Martinez stars Lindsay Burdge and Arthur Martinez discuss the complex concept behind their new film, the freedom of working without rehearsal and the livewire aspect to its production.

Actor Martinez recently held its US premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. It is currently seeking distribution.

How did this project first come to you both?

Arthur: I was actually, inadvertently, one of the pitchers. I didn’t know what I was pitching for. I knew I was throwing, but I didn’t expect this weird curveball.

Lindsay: Nathan [Silver] and I had hung out at another film festival shortly before he pitched this to me. Then, we were in New York and he said, “We came up with this movie in Denver, we want to make it soon. Do you want to do it?” He said it was about a man, Arthur, and this woman falling in love. I was supposed to be a gardener or something like that and it was supposed to be a regular movie. Next thing I knew months had passed and I was sent this outline which was not that movie at all.

Arthur: Wow, you got an outline though.

Lindsay: You knew that [Laughs].

Arthur: That still blows my mind [Laughs].

Lindsay: I know! I got an outline and it said, “Arthur does this.” Then it says, “Lindsay Burdge, actress from New York, does this.” I was like, “Oh, this is not the movie that I thought we were making at all.”

Arthur: I still haven’t seen the outline. That’s why I’m amazed at what she’s saying. She’s told me this before and I still have a hard time believing it.

Once you actually got into the production phase, were you anticipating the extent to which this would blend between documentary and narrative? Were you caught off guard when you were actually filming?

Arthur: That whole film is me caught off guard. Yeah, no, they didn’t tell me anything. They went to extra pains to hide what was happening. They would hide me off set somewhere and have somebody guard me so I wouldn’t go look beforehand.

What’s it like going into that situation where you don’t have that safety harness—or a script—to guide you?

Arthur: My classical training got in the way. I had to throw it out. You just have to throw it out. So after the first three days, I figured just throw it out.

Lindsay: There was definitely an adjustment period. I definitely knew more than Arthur did, about how it was going to be this blended thing, but there were a couple layers that I didn’t know were going to be there. I knew I was going to be playing myself. I knew I was going to be playing this character, but then there were these other characters also that I didn’t know I was going to have to sort out.

So the first day was very stressful and the second day got a little less stressful and then it became fun once I understood the rules, but until I knew the rules of the game we were playing it was very stressful and uncomfortable. We didn’t have anything really to hold onto at first. There’s no script, there’s no character, and so we weren’t working on a scene together. It was more like manipulating each other [Laughs].

Arthur: She’s right. They used us as weapons against each other and I’m sorry about some of those things I had to say [Laughs].

Lindsay: You got me once. I was like, “Ah nice, they got me. The tables have turned. Fair enough.”

It sounds a lot like theater exercises, almost more so than the traditional narrative structure of film. Did you find it liberating at all?

Lindsay: Yes, I thought it was really fun. It became really fun for me.

Arthur: Yeah, it was always scary, but I’m down.

Lindsay: Sometimes you had fun, right?

Arthur: Well… yeah. I mean, there’s a reason I did this. It’s like riding a roller coaster, I’ve been screaming the whole time. It’s awesome.

Lindsay: But also, we were playing different games. We had different rules that we’re playing by. Because you were like, “I’m going to know nothing,” and I was like, “I gotta know something.”

Arthur: I don’t remember actually making that rule, I think that was [co-directors] Mike [Ott] and Nathan [Silver].

Lindsay: I remember saying to you, “Do you want me to sneak you the outline?” And you were like, “No no no.”

Arthur: Nah, you can’t mess with the director. Not on set.

It must take a lot of faith then to just throw yourself into that process and trust it.

Arthur: You trust the talent that you’re working for. It was a lot of pressure to make sure if they spent five hours setting up a shot that I actually did my job. Which is difficult when you don’t know what your job is, but that’s ok. You just do it. Hope for the best.

Lindsay: It was mostly just being. At least from watching you, it seemed like just being kind of open and available and reacting, which was cool to watch actually.

There’s a lot of tension though in some of those interactions. How much of that was authentic?

Arthur: You just defined acting. Serious, that’s the definition of acting and if it’s not, you’re not doing your job.

Lindsay: I think some of it was definitely real and some of it was manipulated. And I’m not sure Arthur still knows which is which [Laughs].

Arthur: I don’t know. I’m just going with it.

Lindsay: And I don’t either sometimes. Some of those times, I think we were recreating that tension or the tension was to swerve the plot of the movie, which there is actually a plot. Other times it was real frustration. It was fun kind of fun for me. Sometimes I felt like your advocate.

Arthur: Thank you, I did need that. It was brutal. They just beat up on me until she showed up. They’d got me so far off what I realized center was and she did a great deal to re-center me.

Lindsay: And also just to have somebody else say, “This is frustrating.”

It gave you a partner in the process.

Lindsay: Sometimes they would do this thing where they were like, “I don’t know, I’ve worked with a lot of different actors who don’t have a problem with this kind of work.” And I’m like, “Oh yeah? I know a lot of them, and they do.”

How much of what’s on the screen do you actually feel responsible for injecting into the narrative?

Arthur: This is like taking bunch of colors—everybody who worked on this—and swirling them all together. How much of that is me? I can’t even tell anymore, maybe none of it. Maybe some of it. I don’t know.

Lindsay: Did you even suggest shooting in your apartment?

Arthur: That was a resource, yes. That was the purpose of it. I didn’t know we were going to shoot what we shot.

Lindsay: I still don’t know what he’s… I don’t trust this guy.

Arthur: I don’t trust me either. It’s crazy.

Lindsay: I don’t how much of it is you… because I arrived and it was already underway.

Arthur: You’re right about that. I was part of the early production process, I just didn’t know what was coming out of it. I just made the decision to trust Mike and Nathan. Those guys are crazy.

Now that you’ve had the chance to see the final film, how closely did it resemble what you thought you were making?

Lindsay: Very closely for me.

Arthur: Ok, I’m down with that. It must have matched the outline at least.

Lindsay: It didn’t match the outline. The outline was four pages long and had almost nothing in it, but it matched what I felt like we were making while we were making it.

Are there any things from this experience, the looseness of it, that you maybe miss in other films that you make?

Arthur: I think they all should be different. They’re all very different experiences and that’s ok.

Lindsay: I feel like there definitely was a sort of livewire element to this because we had to be so on our toes and just ready to go with whatever came at us. Nothing ever became polished, which was really nice. Often we would do a scene and I’d be like, “So are gonna do that again?” And they’d be like, “No! We got it, that was great!” And I’m like, “We did it one time! Don’t you want to do it again? It’ll be better.” And they were just like, “No.”

I liked that. I like how fresh it was, and it would be interesting to think about how to bring that to other stuff. We had to be so quick on our feet. But I don’t know how you could bring that to something when you’ve read the whole script and you know exactly what you’re saying.

Is it wrong to think about this film as percentages? As 50% documentary, 50% fiction?

Lindsay: You’d probably be wrong if you tried to divide it. Even if we tried to divide it. I still don’t know how much Arthur knew what was going on all the time.

Arthur: She’s right, I was part of the initial production, but it was definitely different [by the end]. There’s no way to identify what’s real or not in the scene. I can say this part of the scene is real. I’m sure it would be like reading a story about yourself in a tabloid. In many ways, this is a tabloid film.

The sinister potential of New Age practices gets explored yet again in Karl Mueller’s Rebirth, a psychological thriller continuing the somewhat recent trend of films about cults like Faults, The Invitation, and Martha Marcy May Marlene. This time, rather than taking inspiration from the likes of the Manson family or Jonestown, Rebirth bases its eponymous enlightenment group off of the Church of Scientology, and anyone vaguely familiar with L. Ron Hubbard’s creepy “religion” will pick up on the influence within minutes. And while Mueller provides enough intrigue to keep viewers guessing, he has a hard time coming up with a proper conclusion for his small-scale mind games.

Kyle (Fran Kranz) is a typical upper-middle-class office drone, living in a big suburban home with his wife and daughter and spending his days working at a bank in the city. An opening montage establishes the happy monotony of Kyle’s life, which soon gets interrupted when his old college friend Zack (Adam Goldberg) shows up at his work. Zack asks Kyle to cancel all his weekend plans and participate with him in something called Rebirth, which he only describes as “an experience.” Kyle bristles at the boldness of his old friend’s proposal, but he decides to go for it after succumbing to his nostalgic feelings.

Things get weird in a short amount of time, as the hotel Kyle checks himself into for the weekend getaway turns out to be a ruse. A series of clues leads him to a bus filled with dozens of other men, all of whom have to hand over their cell phones and wear blindfolds for the entire ride while they’re taken to Rebirth’s real location. Upon arriving, Kyle and the other bus passengers get taken to a room where a man (Steve Agee) explains Rebirth’s anti-establishment philosophies, making it sound like some sort of college bro’s attempt at copying Chuck Palahniuk. From there, several strange events draw Kyle away from the main group and off into a sort of hellish funhouse, exploring a derelict building where each room offers a different, stranger facet of what Rebirth has to offer.

This section of the film turns out to be its strongest, even though its structure and influences are plain as day. Kyle bounces from room to room, and every door he opens functions as an excuse for Mueller to come up with a bizarre situation to throw his protagonist into. An early highlight involves Kyle stumbling into some kind of support group whose leader (Andrew J. West) torments people both physically and psychologically. It’s a gripping sequence, but it’s a borderline remake of the classroom scenes in Whiplash. Plenty of other influences pop up throughout Rebirth, including David Fincher’s The Game and Charlie Brooker’s TV series Black Mirror, but these comparisons aren’t complimentary; it just shows that Mueller is a competent copycat.

On the other hand, Mueller’s focus is squarely on creating an entertaining game of figuring out what’s real or part of Rebirth, and Kranz and the committed ensemble (including Harry Hamlin and Pat Healy, who take full advantage of their small roles) make the film’s transparent qualities easier to forgive. It’s in the final act, when the group starts exerting its influence on Kyle’s personal life, that the screenplay starts to break down. By breaking away from Rebirth’s controlled environment and into the real world, the plausibility of the whole scenario gets extremely thin, but not as thin as whatever message Mueller tries to tack on in the closing minutes. After an abrupt ending, the film switches over to one of Rebirth’s promotional videos while the credits roll. The video, a deliberate attempt to mimic Scientology’s promos (including the infamous Tom Cruise video), makes the whole film feel like the set-up for a corny punchline. A brief section of the video, where Rebirth promotes its branded product line, suggests a bit of a sly commentary on New Age ideas getting swallowed up by capitalist interests, but it’s drowned out by the parodic, wink-nudge nature of the clip.

Gangly-armed or thick-necked with off-colored skin tones or noses—the harshly drawn inhabitants of Nerdland don’t have the benefit of beauty to mask their ugly insides. They’re off-putting even when appealing. Like many of the character designs on Adult Swim cartoon shows, the characters’ distinctive features are sharpened and exaggerated in ways that makes their appearances unsettling. It should be no surprise that Nerdland comes from Chris Prynoski (Metalocalypse, Motorcity), veteran of the late night Cartoon Network universe, where absurdist and divisive humor has thrived for the past couple decades.

In the heart of the entertainment industry, nearly 30-year-old roommates John (voiced by Paul Rudd) and Elliot (Patton Oswalt) feel their shot at world fame is dwindling. At first, both seem like familiar characters repurposed for Nerdland’s grimy, stoner sketchbook aesthetic. The pair live together in a rundown Hollywood apartment with old beer bottles and pizza boxes strewn across the floor. Elliot, a would-be screenwriter, who spends more time on the couch playing video games than writing (a depressing familiar conceit) ends up penning a script about a vengeful Rip Van Winkle waking from his slumber to shotgun blast open the skulls of strip club patrons. His roommate John—an aspiring actor—is the gentler, naïf, Lenny Small-type. When John tries to pass off Elliot’s script to a well-known movie star, John fumbles the pages and rips his pants in an effort to pick them up, exposing his puckered anus to the crowd.

The hand-drawn feature animation is the first feature from animation house Titmouse, Inc., a smooth transition to the big screen that borrows animated TV comedies’ fast-paced style. Quick cutaways pepper the dialog-heavy moments with visual gags. They reveal the protagonists’ dreams of red carpets lined with adoring fans or boob-filled, heavenly utopias, many of which feel ripped from an angsty teenage boy’s fantasies. But like a random episode of Family Guy, these jokes range in quality from shocking and fun to predictably cynical. Its misanthropic charms often redeem Nerdland, but John and Elliot’s aversion to productivity can become grating to watch for the duration (even if that length is only 83 minutes).

John and Elliot’s pursuit of fame at any twisted cost makes the pair progressively harder to like. Nerdland‘s mocking vision of LA is short on any redeeming personalities. Filled with silly caricatures of the fame-worshipping underclass, it’s clear that the director Prynoski as well as the screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker hate just about every person in this world. And yes, that’s the same Andrew Kevin Walker who wrote Se7en and contributed an uncredited rewrite to Fight Club—a film with similar nihilistic social satire. With a considerably scattershot plot, one which has a somewhat episode design, Nerdland lacks some of the narrative momentum that comes from more cohesive stories.

While a majority of scenes revolve around the funny duo at the cartoon’s center, recognizable voices make cameos throughout. Comedians such as Molly Shannon, Paul Scheer, as well as Garfunkel & Oats’ Kate Micucci & Riki Lindhome make extended appearances. Among the funniest roles, Hannibal Burress’ discomforting slant on the standard, slovenly Comic Book Guy pairs well with his wry delivery. Like many of the notable comedians that lend their voice to Nerdland, Oswalt and Rudd don’t alter their voice for their roles—they’re each well-suited to the characters and make for an amusing, albeit unlikely pairing.

Victims of a media-driven culture, John and Elliot ultimately determine that their shortest path to recognition is through notoriety—though as a hapless pair of unskilled, intermittently unemployed slackers the duo’s ability to accomplish anything is questionable. Some of their antics are hilarious but as the film progresses, many of the bits drag on too long. Prynoski and Walker find some strange insights on their race to the moral bottom with John and Elliot—a commentary that often acts more searing and urgent than it is—but like a developing TV comedy, Nerdland is often best in small patches.

In one of the biggest, baddest episodes of the Way Too Indiecast yet, we welcome two of the best directors in the game as we hear from Richard Linklater about his ’80s college hangout movie Everybody Wants Some!! and are joined by Jeff Nichols, whose sci-fi thriller Midnight Special hits theaters this weekend as well.

WTI’s very own Ananda Dillon chats with Bernard about what she saw of AMC’s new Preacher series at WonderCon this past weekend, and if that wasn’t enough, the Dastardly Dissenter himself, CJ Prince, chimes in to talk about the recent controversy surrounding the Tribeca Film Festival and share his Indie Pick of the Week. Whew! What are you waiting for? Dive into the deep end of this week’s pool of ooey gooey Indiecast goodness!

And if that last sentence grosses you out…um…just hit play and enjoy.

Topics

• Indie Picks (5:18)
• Richard Linklater (18:42)
• Preacher Preview (32:17)
• Tribeca Vaxxed Controversy (51:13)
• Jeff Nichols (1:06:32)

Articles Referenced

• City of Gold Interview
• Fireworks Wednesday Review
• Everybody Wants Some!! Interview
• Midnight Special Interview
• Preacher Preview

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Reed Morano, a successful cinematographer, takes her first shot at directing with Meadowland. And it may be because she’s so cinematically inclined, or perhaps she has a dark side the public is getting a taste of here, but she’s chosen some truly heavy material from Chris Rossi (also his first) to kickstart her directorial career. Granted, drama makes for plenty of opportunity to play with the camera, and she certainly does, providing dreamy, close-up, mood all over the place. And it may be because she usually only has control of the camerawork of a film that she felt so inclined to rev up the other sensory experiences of the film to maximum intensity.

The film is about Sarah and Phil (Olivia Wilde and Luke Wilson) who, at the film’s outset, are struck the heavy blow of having their only son kidnapped. Flash forward a year and Phil is back at work as a cop, dealing with his grief with the occasional support group meeting and lunches with a friend who lost his daughter (John Leguizamo). Sarah, on the other hand, stays fairly numb with the help of lithium, barely passing for a teacher at the grade school she teaches at. Clearly these two have chosen the grieve alone path, Sarah often wandering around Times Square late at night, not necessarily searching so much as distracting herself, and Phil parking outside the gas station where their son disappeared as though he may wander back in the dead of night.

The detective on their case presents some new evidence that suggests what neither, though Sarah especially, want to hear. In her own misguided attempt to avoid reality she goes to cringe-worthy extremes leading to a belligerent and uncomfortable end. Grief manifests differently for everyone, especially in the circumstance of a cold case where the absence of concrete evidence doesn’t allow for proper grief, but Sarah’s self-destruction is especially difficult to watch. Morano also makes it quite hard to listen to. The music and sound design of the film are pumped up so high at parts it hurts. What’s meant to be a distraction tactic for the characters is just plain wearisome for the viewer.

Calling the film a bummer is an understatement. Wilde is convincingly inconsolable—and a bit crazy—in what is clearly meant to be a showcase of her talent, but in the hands of Morano, we’re rather hit in the head with it repeatedly. Wilson is of course the easier to sympathize with, those trademark Wilson puppy dog eyes playing to his advantage, but Rossi could have written Phil with more backbone to counter Sarah’s intensity better. As is, the two don’t have much in the way of chemistry, or even a believable animosity befitting their situation. They are more like two characters sharing the same story by chance.

Rossi wrote a script exploring the most gruesome depths of repressed grief, Morano certainly pulled it out of the actors and added further intensity with her blurry focus and pore-revealing intimacy in almost every scene, throw in the ear-assault and too-serious actions of the characters and it stops being insightful and starts being a bit scary. The film does a full stop at the very end, attempting to bring the mood back up with a slipshod scene that feels so much like a therapy session it’s laughable. Sorry Morano, you can’t assail viewers for 90 minutes and not expect them to be numb by the end to any ploy at pulling at heartstrings. Like Rossi’s characters, we can’t help but follow their lead and remain neatly anesthetized.

Originally published as part of our 2015 Tribeca Film Festival coverage.

Depending on your generation of comedy, the name National Lampoon likely signifies drastically different levels of quality. For decades, the media empire developed some of the most influential comedy and comedians of their era, including names like John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Billy Murray, Ivan Reitman, Christopher Guest, and more. Documentarian Douglas Tirola uses the deep archives of sharp, satirical National Lampoon material to pull together a hilarious, rapid-fire biographical documentary on the history of the Lampoon. Complete with interviews from National Lampoon co-founder Henry Beard, Animal House director John Landis, and former chief executive of the Lampoon Matty Simmons, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon is replete of material to thrill Lampoon fans.

The documentary draws from years of funny material and the deep roster of iconic humorists associated with the National Lampoon brand. The magazine’s distinctive illustrations become fully animated and the assortment of ridiculous Lampoon photoshoots are arranged into hysterical slideshows. Some of the best insights that Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead provides are into individual gags and issues. In tracing the development behind standout material like the Yearbook issue or the infamous cover of the “Death” issue, Douglas Tirola’s documentary reveals the thought process that birthed such darkly twisted humor.

Recognizable names such as Chevy Chase, Ivan Reitman and Al Jean appear for interviews, but Tirola also pulls from writers like Michael O’Donoghue, Tony Hendra and P.J. O’Rourke for revealing tidbits about the early days at the Lampoon. As Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead moves through the creation and establishment of the National Lampoon brand, it seamlessly integrates profiles on a collection of important figures to the story. The film highlights nearly all the major writers, illustrators and businessmen who brought the company from a small magazine to a nationally recognized media conglomerate.

Large sections are devoted to two chief contributors who have both died: Douglas Kenney and John Belushi. Kenney co-created the Lampoon with Henry Beard, but by Beard’s own admission Kenney was the driving force while the magazine was young and growing. Kenney’s absence from the documentary is strongly felt, since his work resulted in much of the most memorable output from National Lampoon; however, Chevy Chase’s emotional reflection on his last days with Kenney is one of the film’s most touching moment. Belushi, too, is showered with adulation. As the star of Lampoon’s first live show “Lemmings,” and their first feature film Animal House, Belushi’s impact on National Lampoon was massive.

Whenever the interviews veer towards the more upsetting aspects to National Lampoon’s story, the interviewees tend to brush aside the question. For every great success that the National Lampoon had, there was a falling out or a missed opportunity, such as when NBC approached Matty Simmons about creating a Saturday night sketch show before Lorne Michaels had a chance to pull from the Lampoon’s cast. The story is steeped in touchy subject matter, from inter-office hostility to drug addiction and death, but the documentary mostly skirts past these unhappy moments.

The first on-camera interview in Tirola’s film comes from Billy Bob Thornton, who like fellow celebrity fans of the Lampoon Judd Apatow and John Goodman, reminisces on the influential and biting humor of the magazine’s early days. It reveals the documentarian’s intentions to an extent, this is a nostalgia-driven piece meant to celebrate the legacy of National Lampoon. The film treats just about everything that happens after National Lampoon’s Vacation like an ellipsis at the end of a sentence. Instead, it focuses on (mostly) men with decades of separation from the National Lampoon looking back on their fond, funny memories.

Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon may not tell the complete story behind National Lampoon, but it’s the best examination that National Lampoon had to offer. Tirola’s film is energetic, plowing through the hilarious backlog of National Lampoon magazine clippings or radio segments fast enough to stay constantly entertaining. The frequently funny documentary is a fitting ode to one of comedy’s vital institutions.

Originally published as part of our 2015 Tribeca Film Festival coverage.

You won’t catch me complaining about rom-coms or decrying the genre as lifeless, well-worn, or ready for bed. One cannot blame a film genre for the laziness of writers, directors, and narrow-minded studios. The same trends we see in consumer products apply to filmmaking. If it works, mass produce it until the market oversaturates and the people demand something new. Leslye Headland is demanding something different. Demanding, and making. Her sophomore film—a follow up to 2012’s Bachelorette—Sleeping With Other People is rom-com 2.0. Or 10.0, who knows which iteration we’re really on, all I know is we are ready for it. Headland must have decided unrealistic banter, comedy based on error and miscommunication, and men being the only ones allowed to misuse sex was getting old. All of which I tend to agree with.

In Sleeping With Other People, Headland, who also wrote the film, presents the “just friends” scenario and frees it up to be honest and self-aware, making for that rare and highly sought after rom-com combo: emotionally fulfilling AND hilarious.  If there is such thing as “organic” comedy, this is it. No one is genetically modifying the laughs in this film, they are all entirely deserved. Does that mean she goes light on the raunch or wickedness? Not for a second.

Starring Alison Brie and Jason Sudeikis, much of the film’s success falls on their mutual magnetism. Brie plays Lainey (but don’t worry she’s nothing like Laney Boggs from She’s All That), a kindergarten teacher with a longtime addiction to her always-unavailable college crush Matthew (Adam Scott). Lainey runs into the guy she lost her virginity to in college, Jake (Sudeikis), at a sex addicts meeting. Since their one-night tryst in college he’s become your typical serial polygamist, successful in his career—he’s just sold his startup to a large corporation led by a sexy CEO (Amanda Peet) he’s determined to nail—and totally absorbed in his sexual amusements. Jake and Lainey attempt a date but decide their mutual attraction will only feed into each other’s bad habit of abusing sex, deciding instead to remain friends.

What ensues is a modern update on When Harry Met Sally’s cynical approach to male-female friendships. Lainey and Jake keep the lines of communication between each other wide open, and similar to Meg Ryan’s famously enlightening lesson on the fake orgasms of woman, this film’s most talked about scene is likely to be when Jake goes into an in-depth (and visually illustrated) lesson on female masturbation. The two are so communicative as to inform each other when they are feeling attracted to the other, developing a safe-word: “mousetrap.”

The real heart of the film lies in their growing friendship and their increased dependence on one another. It’s a modern comedy that allows its characters to fall in love naturally, without the pressure of sex, while also providing plenty of sex throughout the film (with other people). The comedy of the film comes entirely from its honesty and openness, proving that mishaps, mistakes, and misperceptions aren’t the only way for romantic films to utilize comedy.

The dialog pushes Headland’s film far out of the realm of the usual rom-com as well. Not because it’s not bantery, but because the banter is surprising and realistically clever—with all the speed of Sorkin and the referential easter eggs of Gilmore Girls drained of un-believability. Contemporary audiences will appreciate the Millennial-style straight-forwardness and Lainey and Jake’s no-holds-barred conversation style. Throw in some irreverence—like taking drugs at a kid’s birthday party or Lainey’s adulterous weaknesses or Jake’s hesitancy in describing sex with a black woman—and it all adds up to a perfectly balanced amount of laughter and well-built romance.

Brie’s usual sweetness, most evidenced in her role in TV show Community, is balanced with some of the spirit we see her exhibit in AMC’s Mad Men as Trudy Campbell. She’s not a sucker, although she often returns to her hopeless romance with a married man, instead she’s a woman whose sexual desires have only been met by one man and she’s never known what it is to have emotional and sexual fulfillment in the same place. She’s not a victim, she never needs saving, she just needs a friend.

Sudeikis is also impressive, reigning in any lingering SNL silliness and playing as believably sexy and flawed, but not despicable. He could easily have made Jake appear creepy,—taking advantage of Lainey’s friendship—or pitiful—falling for a girl he may never get—but he stays equal parts damaged and dashing at all times.

They are surrounded by a great supporting cast including Jason Mantzoukas in my favorite role of his yet, and Natasha Lyonne playing both the mandatory best friend and mandatory gay best friend all at once, even if she’s not wholly believable as Lainey’s best friend. Adam Scott also plays against type as a nerdy scumbag, and Adam Brody goes big in his one early scene with Brie to hilarious effect.

The possibilities in romantic scenarios will never cease (though most romantic comedies tend to navigate to the same three or four), and Headland turns to one we’ve seen plenty of times before—the friendship-turned-romantic situation—but her approach is outgoing and unrestrained, not only with her humor but in the total transparency between her lead characters. These characters may be more clever than most people we know, more attractive, and more successful, but their friendship feels relatable and their flaws are actual which makes for heartier laughs and an aphrodisiacal love story.

A version of this review first ran as part of our 2015 Tribeca Film Festival coverage. 

An actor earns serious credit when they not only perform incredibly in a role but perform it in a way that makes audiences believe no one else could have possibly played it better. Not to overly gush about a film others have already gushed enough over, but I was oozing with said respect when exiting Grandma. Not only is it a well-written film with a rare and fiercely defined main character, but its title role fits its perfectly casted actor, Lily Tomlin, in perfect symbiosis. Playing this role at this point in her career is perfect timing, and Paul Weitz casting and utilizing her unique talents is an example of the art of directing at its finest. Though comedy might be the safest genre for allowing septuagenarians to shine (though Grandma is more a part of that ambiguous sub-genre of dramedy), it’s films like this that prove there is a trove of older actors who, in addition to the talent they already bring, provide another level of performance that, when given the chance, can absolutely blow us away.

This secret reserve of talent—likely derived straight from life experience—is something Tomlin displays in abundance in Grandma. A taciturn and grieving widow, Tomlin plays Elle Reid, a feminist poet and movement leader, still revered if not much remembered from her glory days. A year and a half has passed since her partner Violet has died from cancer, and her relationship with a much younger woman, Olivia (Judy Greer), is ending and she deals with it with the same cutting rigidity with which she faces all of life’s challenges, telling Olivia she doesn’t love her, and to leave her key on the table. Elle hardly has time to actually process this breakup when her teenaged granddaughter Sage (the curly-haired goddess Julia Garner) shows up on her front door, pregnant and in need of funds for an abortion.

Elle does her due diligence as a grandma—complaining about the price of an abortion these days—and also as a wizened woman, asking Sage if she’s thought through the decision since she’s likely to think of it at some point every day for the rest of her life, but never tries to talk her out of it. Instead, she grabs the keys to her vintage Dodge and agrees to help Sage scare up the $600 she needs by 5:30 that afternoon. As Elle attempts to collect on old debts and the goodwill of friends, more of her varied and complicated life is revealed. Laverne Cox is a tattoo artist buddy who tells of Elle’s kindhearted gift of loaning her money to fix a botched transgender boob-job. Elizabeth Pena is coffee shop owner who puts Elle in her place by offering $50 for some of her old first edition hardbacks, including The Feminine Mystique (and Sage wonders aloud if the book has anything to do with The X-Men). Elle challenges Sage’s sensibilities, teaching her along the way by standing up to her deadbeat boyfriend when Sage won’t (hilariously kicking the teenager’s ass) and making a scene in a coffee shop when the proprietor asks her to quiet down when discussing abortion.

While clearly pro-choice, the film doesn’t especially try to conventionalize or even trivialize abortion but instead bring it into colloquial terms. Sage’s decision is treated with gravity and respect. It’s even given an interesting dual-perspective by another character in the film, who expresses the sadness an abortion once brought them with sincerity and dignity. The crux of the film lies within a scene between Elle and her one-time husband Karl (Sam Elliott, also absolutely shining), he an unfortunate casualty of Elle being gay at a time when no one was discussing such things and thus part of her path of destruction in her youth.  They chit-chat about lovers and grandchildren, roll a doobie together, and then go on to have a fiercely charged and emotionally revealing series of exchanges that perfectly expresses the complexity of real relationships, the many forms of love, and the way our decisions shape us and stay with us as we mature.

Paul Weitz is a wonder in being able to capture saturated morsels of the different humor associated with different age ranges and genders. In American Pie he nailed the adolescent male mind without demeaning it, and here he’s traveled the length of the spectrum (galaxy?) to home in on the perfectly evolved humor of an aging widowed lesbian academic. I’ve certainly never heard anyone insult another by calling them a “writer-in -residence” but the joke is among the sharpest of the film. All involved should certainly remain in the minds of voters when awards season rolls around.

Filled with laughs, realistic love, and a freedom to emote, Grandma is as cathartic as it is hilarious. Even while seeing the pain that comes from a lifetime filled with loss and experience, the wisdom and humor of a lifetime’s experience is given equal merit. It’s enough to make being a grandma look like the coolest job out there, and a reason to look forward to advancing through our years.

A version of this review was originally published as part of our Tribeca 2015 coverage.

Is it really possible that Lily Tomlin has gone this long without a starring vehicle of her own? The iconic actress has decades of perfectly timed, naturalistic punchlines under her belt, yet for years her parts have been largely reduced to limited arcs on TV shows or small, supporting roles in middling movies. Writer/Director Paul Weitz clearly saw the enormous potential in this market gap. Following his 2013 Tina Fey comedy Admission, in which Lily Tomlin played Fey’s mother, Weitz wrote an entire movie with Tomlin in mind.

Grandma premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival to slew of praise for Tomlin (Way Too Indie caught up with it at Tribeca and had glowing things to say, too). Despite its title, Tomlin’s character is far form a withered, weakened old lady. In Grandma, Tomlin plays Elle Reid, a misanthropic lesbian poet, whose granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) shows up broke and in need of an abortion. Together, the two journey to collect cash, confront their pasts, and hit Nat Wolff in the balls with a hockey stick.

Grandma also stars a collection of familiar faces, many of them in the trailer, including Sam Elliott, John Cho, Marcia Gay Harden, Judy Greer and Laverne Cox. While New Zealanders will get a early chance to see Grandma at the New Zealand International Film Festival in July, Americans everywhere will have to cope with Granmda‘s August 21st release date by watching and re-watching the pleasant new trailer below:

It can become harder to develop friendships as you grow older. For Emily and Alex, who recently moved from Seattle to Los Angeles with their young son R.J., they’re worried about their ability to make those new connections in an unfamiliar neighborhood. But when R.J. starts to play with another boy at the park, Emily and Alex are introduced to the boy’s enigmatic father, Kurt (Jason Schwartzman). The sleekly dressed, seemingly clichéd Angeleno opens with a joke about his son’s vegan diet before kindly offering recommendations of the best local shops and restaurants.

Kurt can’t resist himself though, there’s so much more to share, so he invites the newly relocated couple over for dinner that night with him and his wife. Emily (Orange Is The New Black’s Taylor Schilling) argues worst-case scenario is they’ll go home after a boring night and Alex (Adam Scott) worries the bottle of Two Buck Chuck they brought with them isn’t fancy enough; however, neither expects their overnight family playdate will test the couple’s openness, and the strength of Emily and Alex’s marital bond.

At the onset of The Overnight, Emily and Alex guide each other through their morning sex. They accommodate one another and exchange helpful instructions, but seem to have made “self-completion” a ritualistic finish. They’re a cooperative couple, even if they’re not perfectly compatible. Their collective anxiety is largely embodied by Adam Scott’s performance as Alex. Shades of Scott’s Parks and Recreation persona manifesting itself in Alex’s neurosis, particularly the character’s habit of impulsively lying in response to questions in order to respond “the right way.” Yes of course he paints with acrylics, who wouldn’t?

Alex is constantly on the back foot in Kurt’s house. Kurt comes on very strong, and from almost the moment that Emily and Alex arrive at Kurt’s house they’re deluged by his conversation. The Spanish lessons Kurt gives his kindergarten-aged son, the water filtration business he’s installing in third world countries, his pompous pronunciation of, “the South of France,” (as if France is pronounced with an ‘aw’). It’s a flood of superfluous character building that takes too long to work through, even with a helping of chuckle-worthy line readings.

For most of The Overnight (which only runs 80 minutes long) we’re waiting for the movie to get to its point. The dynamics of the “family playdate” become increasingly bizarre, but when the alcohol begins to work as a conversational lubricant (as it’s wont to do) the couples’ conversation starts to explore ideas of openness and honesty. Most of the talk steers sexual and you wonder when someone will finally say the word, “swinger,” but there exists a frank and humorous honesty in the characters’ words. When a vulnerable Alex admits to his size-related body issues, it’s uncomfortably funny but oddly touching, seeing new friends bond through understanding.

Taylor Schilling’s Emily appears to be the more self-assured half of the primary pairing. She’s the primary breadwinner for the family and retains more self-control once the adults have worked their way through a couple bottles of red wine. She’s not the butt of nearly as many jokes as her fictional husband, but Taylor Schilling gives Emily a cool, loving energy that makes her performance fun to watch while maintaining a complexity to her character. The Overnight makes it clear that Emily and Alex are very understanding to each other, and refreshingly, they take the time to consult one another throughout the film. The dilemmas here don’t emerge from clichéd bickering, they stem from the complications of a strong couple that are open to each other’s desires.

The instigator for most of the film’s hijinks is Schwartzman’s Kurt, and the potential to enjoy the comedy relies largely on his performance (as well as a tolerance for penis humor). The talkative character Kurt proceeds through the night brazenly dictating the couples’ agenda. It can be hilarious, as he is when confidently strutting naked around the pool, but other times it registers as awkward and unmotivated, like when he shows Emily and Alex a mildly pornographic movie of his wife Charlotte (Judith Godrèche). Schwartzman has an ability to remain charming even as an irritating character, and for the most part, Kurt is mysterious enough to stay intriguing.

The wild night created by The Overnight’s writer/director Patrick Brice (director of SXSW film Creep, also produced by the Duplass Brothers) does uniquely capture the contagious nature of a fun night around people you love. Even as his film plays dumb with its premise a little too much, it’s forgivable within the context of the intoxicating night Emily and Alex share with Charlotte and Kurt. They’re having too much fun exploring their boundaries honestly, and it’s usually entertaining enough to keep watching them.

The Overnight could easily be faulted for its couple of questionable turns, the directness with which the ending lays all the cards out on the table, or the film’s liberal use of prosthetic penises (which might have been the centerpiece in an Apatow or McKay comedy, so kudos to The Overnight). The movie mostly makes up for it by developing a compelling situation, and facilitating charismatic performances from Scott, Schilling and Schwartzman. The Overnight is a sexually adventurous, occasionally uncomfortable comedy with an outrageous ending, but one that feels like the proper result of its story.

A version of this review first appeared as part of our Tribeca 2015 coverage. 

If it’s indeed true that a documentary can only be as compelling as its subject, first-time feature director Crystal Moselle stumbled upon a veritable goldmine when she met the Angulo Brothers and gained access to their lives for The Wolfpack. These lanky, longhaired, half-Peruvian young men ranging in age from 16 to 23 stomp across New York City in ill-fitting suits and dark sunglasses. They absorb the city environment with the eagerness of a flock of tourists. In a way they are, though most of the boys lived in the city for a majority of their lives. That’s because the Angulos spent extended periods of their childhood locked away in their Lower East Side apartment by a paranoid, alcoholic father. That is, until one of the Angulo boys simply decided to leave the apartment.

The Wolfpack took home the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary earlier this year before its New York premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Director Crystal Moselle opens her documentary as the Angulo boys exchange bits of dialog from Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. The boys responded to their captivity by immersing themselves classic movies and remaking them with homemade aesthetics. In a way, the Angulos and The Wolfpack owe a debt to Michel Gondry’s 2008 Be Kind Rewind. The Angulos chop up pieces of cardboard and yoga mats in order to assemble Batman’s suit of armor, or patch on pieces of fake facial hair to more closely resemble Samuel L. Jackson. With limited options, the Angulos escaped into movies to learn about the world. One of the boys articulates it tragically, that movies, “make me feel like I’m living, because it’s magical a bit.”

In total there are seven Angulo children, six boys and one daughter, who is mentally challenged. Growing up, the Angulos would leave their apartment sometimes once, sometimes nine times per year. Occasionally the kids would go a full year without leaving their home. Their father, Oscar, was a Hare Krishna who dreamed of rock & roll stardom with a family of 11 children; however, complications left the Angulo parents in an LSE housing project afraid to leave the home and navigate the negative influences surrounding their residence. This forced seclusion was exacerbated by Oscar’s distrust in the establishment. As one of his sons explained, their father, “didn’t believe in work,” and thought he was either enlightened, or a god himself.

This disposition left Oscar’s wife Susanne the chore of raising and home-schooling the children under his judgmental, watchful eye. Fear was the dominant force in the Angulo household & Moselle’s documentary captures its paralyzing effect on the family. When Susanne discusses rationalizing her children’s confinement by expressing worries about the world outside, it’s easy to understand her thought process. As the victims of an abusive husband and father with deluded worldviews, the Angulos were hostages in their own home. “We were in a prison and at night our cells would lock up,” one of the boys says through a knowing smile, aware of the awful circumstances of his youth. The Wolfpack serves as an intriguing portrait of the lives of a family that’s lives through trauma, but one that ultimately feels hopeful.

Unfortunately, the documentary is little more than its captivating collection of characters. By keeping herself at a distance from the subjects, Moselle fails to elicit deep insights from them. Their story seems so bizarre you hope for a moment when the movie will confront any of the Angulos about how these circumstances hindered their transition into the real world. A scene of the boys at a beach where one of them refuses to get in the water comes close to addressing this dilemma, but rarely does The Wolfpack feel greater than the story of its surface.

That story is a remarkable one, but Moselle’s film only examines the tip of a monstrous iceberg. This is a family that’s undergone a distinctive form of cruelty, but the ramifications are hardly felt. The Angulos are already moving on from their past. Far too many details, such as how Moselle encountered or gained access to the Angulos, are left out of the final film. Several critics have voiced skepticism, either half-seriously or jokingly, of The Wolfpack’s truthfulness. I don’t doubt the authenticity of Moselle’s documentary; however, the murkiness of aspects in the Angulos’ story makes it easy to imagine much of the movie coming from an exaggerated truth instead of the full truth. Moselle discovers an incredibly scary circumstance to grow up in, but doesn’t illustrate a huge amount of detail.

There’s an inevitability to these young men finding freedom with their age, and it’s exciting as Moselle documents their transition into normal people with varied passions. The Angulos’ individual identities aren’t fully explored (truthfully, it’s difficult to distinguish one Angulo from the next for most of The Wolfpack), but they each seem to find a form of vindication for escaping their father’s domain. You can’t help but crave a deeper dive into their lives, but The Wolfpack involves the viewer in a unique struggle and it presents its subjects empathetically. Despite the troubling circumstances of their lives, it’s gratifying to see the Angulos emerge strong from The Wolfpack. The unbelievable story of their upbringing provides an inspirational, albeit uncomfortable, backdrop for Crystal Moselle’s debut documentary.

An earlier version of this review was first published as part of our Tribeca 2015 coverage. 

Falconry, icy tundras, mystical healers, and a mother and son estranged. Claudia Llosa’s third film sounds on paper like a Narnian fantasy. It’s not actually, but watching the film is to play a guessing game of sorts. Within the first few minutes I was sure the film was meant to be dystopian. That might explain Jennifer Connelly’s rat-tail and why the entire film is set in an icy cold winter. But the film’s time period is never really established, which is fine for mystery’s sake, but the film makes a habit of offering only the peaks and no explanatory valleys. Its characters are seen only in their misery, pain, or exaggerated moments with very little buffer between to fill in the gaps of knowledge surrounding their personalities and circumstances. Llosa’s idea of filler seems to be beautiful icy and dreamlike shots that add to the dystopian fantasy, but not to the story.

Told within dual storylines set in an enigmatic future and an enigmatic past, Jennifer Connelly plays Nana, a mother of two boys, the younger of which has incurable cancer. In its opening scenes Nana travels with her sons, Gully and Ivan, to seek “The Healer” (William Shimell) a mystical man who has a cult-like following and hundreds of visitors all seeking healing for themselves and loved ones. Upon arriving at his healing shack, made of intertwined sticks, all of the people seeking healing are given wrapped pebbles. The one with the white one gets to be seen by the healer. Nana doesn’t get it, but she watches as the child of another family enters the stick shack. Ivan, who carries with him a pet falcon, lets his bird fly free. But the falcon gets itself trapped in the stick shack and accidentally destroys it. Nana’s attempt to help only gets her shunned by the livid parents whose healing has been interrupted and incomplete. Desperate for a ride home for her family, she agrees to force her son to leave the falcon behind. A livid father decides that’s not good enough and shoots the bird as it flies off. All a very somber start to the grimness waiting in the rest of the film.

Cut to the “future” where Ivan (Cillian Murphy) is grown, still a falconer, and has a wife and son of his own. A documentarian, Jannia (Mélanie Laurent), comes to interview him but is gruffly shot down when she starts asking questions about Ivan’s mother. His curiosity gets the better of him later, and when he gets Jannia to admit she’s seeking out the current location of his mother he decides to join her to travel to the Arctic circle where’s she’s last been spotted. Meanwhile, back in the past the Healer, Newman, reveals to Nana that the boy whose healing she interrupted with the falcon incident is now cured, and since he never touched the boy, he’s deduced she must have been the one to heal him. A bit of a slap in the face considering her cancer-stricken son. But she’s haunted by the possibility, and starts to seek him out to explore what this could mean. Unfortunately we’re not shown a lot about her investigation or acceptance of her role as a healer, with very few questions around this very mystical side of the film answered.

Connelly plays stony maternal to great effect. She’s by far the most mesmerizing aspect of the film. The moments we get with her and Ivan as mother and son are great, but never steeped in much warmth. Her eventual abandonment of Ivan feels unwarranted, but is just one of several contrived plot points meant to lead to the second storyline. The only relationship that attempts emotion is weirdly between Ivan and Jannia, but doesn’t add up as we don’t know enough about why Ivan has become the man he is and because Jannia is a relative mystery until the very end when her hidden motivations are revealed (and unfortunately not at all surprising).

The snowy landscape, the fanciful falconry (a unique occupational choice that is, surprise surprise, given no backstory), and the sparkling eyes of both Murphy and Connelly do much to allure and create a sense of purpose to the film. But the gaping holes in the film’s story, clearly meant to entice and add mystery, only serve as frustrating barriers in fully connecting with what could be a gorgeous follow-up to Llosa’s Academy Award nominated film The Milk of Sorrow.

Originally published as part of our 2015 Tribeca Film Festival coverage

Immediately after watching John Maclean’s feature film debut, Slow West, I had a nagging feeling that his film style reminded me of another director. I couldn’t nail down his exact style, which is bright but gruesome, gritty but aesthetically pleasing, serious but absolutely hilarious. It didn’t hit me until after some serious thought who the best director to compare him to is. I hesitate to say it, given the high profile comparison, but Maclean has an approach that feels very similar to Wes Anderson. They both take characters that could be easy to simply laugh at, but whose heartfelt conviction is too winning to deny. They both pay close attention to the details of art direction. Heck, there is even a random moment of French-speaking, poetic love-pondering among strangers—very Anderson-esque. Both Anderson and Maclean have a level of self-awareness that adds an intriguing edge and humor. In the case of Slow West, this self-awareness lifts the film up beyond what, on the surface, could have been a run of the mill western with off-beat characters. Instead, what Maclean presents is a campfire tale just bizarre enough to believe and beautiful enough to entrance.

Young, Scottish, and totally out of his element, Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is making his way across turn of the century wild Colorado, heading west in pursuit of his love, Rose Ross (Caren Pistorius). A wonder that he’s survived as long as he has, Jay happens upon Silas Selleck (Michael Fassbender) as Silas holds up a Native-killing ex-soldier in the woods. Silas convinces Jay he’ll never make it to his true love alone and offers to take him for a fee. Jay, shaken by this recent encounter, sees his logic and agrees. They take off together, Jay trying to get to know his new trail partner, Silas making it clear he’s a loner.

Their first stop, at a tiny supply depot, turns unexpectedly violent when a poor immigrant family attempts to hold the general store up to steal money. Things escalate, in this brilliantly directed scene, to a bloody end. But this is life in the Wild West, death is all too common. Jay leaves the situation shaken, but stronger. Silas’s obvious lack of conscience, however, troubles Jay. Jay attempts to go out on his own, running into a kindly German writing a book on the diminishing Native American culture and population. “Theft,” he claims. Jay’s faith in the goodness of people seems momentarily renewed. Until he wakes up alone on the ground, all of his things stolen. Not the only example of humorous irony in Slow West. It’s used in abundance throughout, always with a subtle cleverness that makes for unexpected laughs at unassuming moments.

Unbeknownst to Jay, Rose and her father John (Game of Thrones’ Rory McCann aka The Hound) have a price on their heads, and Silas is actually a bounty hunter. Jay is leading Silas right to her. He isn’t the only outlaw interested in the high reward, however. As the paths of these lawless men cross, more about Silas’s past comes out, and his evolving personal integrity. To Silas, Jay’s undying love, (though it may be misplaced), and virtue are signs of the possibility of decent humanity in the West.

As the various bounty hunters descend upon Rose and her father—one a priestly-looking silent type with a sniper-looking rifle, the other Silas’s old mentor, the fur-coated Payne (Ben Mendelsohn)—it becomes an all out shoot out between the competing parties, as Jay rushes to defend his love.

The film is maybe less fairy tale and more cautionary tale, but the storytelling presented in the film is excellent. Not to mention peppered with Tarantino-quality fighting and deaths. But where Tarantino makes us laugh as reaction to his choreographed gore, Maclean’s humor is a bit higher brow. And the entire thing is infused with an honest and hefty measure of heart. It’s a difficult balance of emotions, and masterfully executed.

Fassbender, while never disappointing when presenting as cold and curt, turns out to have some decent comedic timing. Smit-McPhee takes the cake. His baby-face certainly makes his naive boy-in-love believable, but he adds a wise-beyond-his-years soulfulness that takes Jay beyond pathetic and upward to sweet and charming. The one most likely to be buzzed about after the film releases is newcomer Caren Pistorius as Rose, who holds very little screen-time but owns it when she has it.

Everyone’s on their A-game, including Jed Kurzel and his score (whose abilities to enhance ho-hum genre music we’ve most recently enjoyed in The Babadook). Slow West is the perfect example of a first time filmmaker who knows what he wants and how to invoke talent, making for a visionary and excellently finessed film. With a literal body count at the end, Maclean ties all his loose ends in the satisfying way of most parables. But, like he does throughout his film, what makes it ultimately so entertaining is how much the film goes against expectations, and for a Western—a genre filled with expectation—that’s no small feat.

A version of this review first appeared as part of our Tribeca 2015 coverage. 

Chris Bell‘s documentaries hit close to home. Often putting both himself and his family in front of the lens, Chris gets deeply personal in order to examine the issues that creep into the lives of ordinary Americans. With his first documentary Bigger Stronger Faster, Bell began by looking at the relationship he and his siblings (Mike, a WWE wrestler and Mark, a powerlifter) had to the world of steroids, as well as the expanding realm of cosmetic drugs. In the years since BSF‘s 2008 Sundance Film Festival debut, Bell’s focus shifted to prescription drug abuse with his new documentary Prescription Thugs. In part, it was a result of his older brother Mike, aka “Mad Dog”, who died in 2008 after struggling with a drug problem; however, at the time, Chris was harboring his own secret addiction issues.

In his interview with Way Too Indie from the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival, documentarian Chris Bell opens up about putting himself and his family on camera for his documentaries, confronting the duality of making a documentary about addiction while dealing with your own addiction struggles, and his early aspirations of directing a Rambo movie.

When did your interest in making documentaries first come about?
I never wanted to make documentary films. I didn’t even know what they were. I just wanted to blow shit up. Basically, I wanted to make Arnold Schwarzenegger movies and Sylvester Stallone movies. I was [going to] Gold’s Gym – I went to USC film school – and I met this kid Alex Buono at film school. I was telling him this whole story of a bodybuilding, fitness script I wanted to do. He was like, “You know all these people, you should this as a documentary.”

Once I got into it, it was so much fun and so poignant. I was saying things in the documentary that I could never say in a narrative film. Very rarely do narrative films change your life. For me Rocky, Braveheart were those kind of movies. If I can’t make something like that I think documentaries are the way to go. I like to clear out the bullshit and just tell the truth.

That’s what ended up getting me involved in documentaries and I’ve stayed in it because there are so many things that keep attracting me back to it. Every time I go to make something narrative I get pulled back in.

Right, if it doesn’t have that point, or some message you’re not as interested in pursuing it?
When I ask a lot of people about their film or their script, I’m like, “What point in the world is that going to make?” Not to say that those aren’t good or great films but for me I need to make a serious point with everything that I make.

A lot of your movies are really personal, as well. They involve your family, involve what you’ve personally gone through. Does that provide an additional motivation or is it challenging?
Well when we did Bigger Stronger Faster and my parents were involved I thought that nobody was going to care about [them]. We had our first test screening and everybody was saying, “I could watch a whole movie with just you and your family. Your brothers and your parents.” I realized after Bigger Stronger Faster, everybody said, “How’s [your brother] Mad Dog doing? I want to know how Mad Dog’s doing.”

To me that always resonated. I thought I had to do something [for] Mad Dog. I started watching all the old footage from Bigger Stronger Faster and I realized that a lot of people don’t know that he passed away. So if I start the movie with all this footage of him talking to me, it will look like a continuation of Bigger Stronger Faster. For a lot of people they were so shocked that he passed away.

I think that was a really great way to honor my brother. He was my hero my whole life.

When you’re making a documentary that’s dealing with something so painful, what’s the decision process like of choosing to document it?
Look, losing your brother sucks. Losing any family member sucks. Losing any friend sucks. The thing that you have to do is you have to look at it like, “How can my brother’s death not be in vain?” Yeah, it’s personal, but it’s way more important for me to tell you this story so that it doesn’t happen to you, and your brother, and your family.

I know a lot of people care about how much money their movie makes – I want this movie to be seen by everybody when they go to rehab or when they’re in high school. That kind of thing excites me. Health teachers and college professors, they email me all the time saying they showed Bigger Stronger Faster in their class. If we can replace the old school educational films with some really important, good documentaries then I think kids will be way better off. They’ll be much more informed, and that’s important.

Your documentaries are very engaging, you have central characters and your voiceovers directly address the audience. Is that a focus going into the filmmaking process?
It is, it’s kind of weird. When I first did Bigger Stronger Faster, some of the first criticisms were like, “Oh, he’s trying to be like Michael Moore.” Everybody says that because Michael Moore was the originator of that style but in Bigger Stronger Faster I actually never wanted to be in it. I was talking about like, “Hey, maybe we should get The Rock to narrate this!” I knew him from the gym and different things.

My producer’s like, “No you need to be in it. This is your story. You’re in the middle of this.” So once we started shooting I ended up in the middle of it. Everything was so organic that it just worked. It all came together and I think that’s [because] nothing’s forced.

When we did Prescription Thugs there was a lot of ‘Should I be in it? Should I not be in it?’ We tried to catch lightning in a bottle twice and see if we can do something that’s really impactful again.

How long did it take to put Prescription Thugs together?
Prescription Thugs is kind of a weird movie for me. I was going through my own addiction issues while I was making the movie. I’m now one year sober but in the past year I haven’t put a whole lot of time into Prescription Thugs because we had mostly shot everything and my partner was editing here in New York [while] I was in L.A.

It was a lot of work up front. I wrote the treatment, I got everybody together and while I was doing all this I didn’t realize that I had a really bad drug addiction that I needed to fix before I could make the movie. Then my partner Greg Young was amazing in the fact that he never faltered. When I went to rehab he thought to shut it down, he just wanted to keep cranking.

He kept putting pressure on our other producers like, “Hey we’ve really got something here.” I remember when he made the call to Peter Billingsley and all the executive producers that put the money in. He was like, “Hey, Chris is having a problem, he went to rehab, but he’s willing to put it all in the movie.” I wanted to make sure he told them that so they don’t think everything that we’ve done is for nothing.

There’s no hesitation in opening up that way?
Once I was in it this deep I had to tell the whole story, I had to tell the truth, I had to come clean. When I had a drug addiction problem I couldn’t tell anybody. When I met my girlfriend, I said, “Man, I can’t mess this up. I may never get this chance again.” After maybe two months with her, [she] was the first person I ever told. I told her I have a drug and alcohol problem.

After seven days of being clean I started having the shakes and having these withdrawals and I relapsed. After that she called my brother and my whole family bonded together [with my girlfriend] to help me. I went up to my parents’ house, I still had some Xanax in my, I was kind of loopy in bed, and I kept telling my mom, “Just call Richard Taite.” It was sort of like, “Help me Obi Wan Kenobi.” I kept saying it, “Call Richard Taite he can help me.”

My mom calls [my producing partner] Greg and she’s like, “Chris keeps talking about this guy Richard Taite.” Greg’s like, “Oh, we interviewed him, he owns Cliffside Malibu.” When Richard Taite found out what happened to me he was so willing to step in and help, basically save my life and change my life.

How did you struggle to make a film about addiction while dealing with your own addiction issues?
Everyday… Look, my soul is good. I was trying to do a good thing. When I first interviewed Richard he said to me, “I knew there was something wrong with you, I didn’t know exactly what it was but I knew that you had a problem.” I said, “Why didn’t you stop me? You’re an addiction specialist.” He goes, “You never get in the way of somebody doing something good.”

It all played out the right way. God has a way of making things come full circle so when [Richard] came back into the movie it was really interesting. None of this was planned, obviously, it’s just a crazy story. I was trying to make a movie about prescription drug addiction and I was still doing it. That’s what I want people to realize, that’s how powerful it is.

I haven’t had a drink in a year and I feel amazing. I haven’t been in better shape in a long time, I haven’t felt better. I think that that’s going to transfer into the next film I make, I’m going to smash it out of the park. I know that because I’m going to be sober the entire way.

From its premise alone it would be easy to discard Man Up in the same waste bin with Kate Hudson’s career from ’06 to ’09 and rejected Katherine Heigl movie pitches. After a night of heavy drinking, and yet another failed first date, Nancy (Lake Bell) gets mistaken for another woman at the train station only to end up on a blind date with Jack (Simon Pegg), a man that she actually could see herself dating. It feels unfair to try and defend the movie against all the romantic comedies that this one isn’t, because Man Up is an exceedingly charming unlikely love story with quick wit and hilarious performances despite any semblance to worse films. Having held its premiere at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival, the movie is hardly a revelation within the rom com subgenre. The best thing about Man Up that less successful versions of this movie lack is Lake Bell in the lead role.

To this point in her career, Bell has largely been relegated to the supporting parts in films like It’s Complicated or No Strings Attached. Even her memorable TV appearances (Boston Legal, How to Make It In America, Children’s Hospital) feature her among an ensemble of funny actors. It was Bell’s feature filmmaking debut in 2013, In a World…, that helped to exhibit her magnitude and versatility in a starring role. As Nancy in Man Up, Bell once again demonstrates her mastery of accent work, seamlessly adopting a British inflection to her lines. She’s able to sell rapidly exchanged pieces of dialog and broadly absurd physical comedy; however, Bell appears so earnestly genuine that it’s impossible to deny her likeability.

Man Up begins by moving through a raucous hotel-set engagement party as a couple sneaks away to copulate in their room. Locked away by herself in the next room is Nancy, reciting a list of mantras into her mirror. She hopes to overcome her anxiety about the man downstairs whom her friends have set her up to meet, but first orders room service to avoid being at the party. Eventually, her date goes poorly and the next morning Nancy is hung-over on a train to London for her parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. Across from Nancy’s seat, a peppy, optimistic 24-year-old named Jessica (Ophelia Lovibond) flips through a copy of a self-help book before giving her copy to Nancy out of concern. Unfortunately for Jessica, the man she’s arranged to meet for a blind date, Pegg’s character, sees the self-help book with Nancy and mistakes her for the 24-year-old he planned on taking out.

The implementation of a misunderstanding as the impetus for romance has been a staple of cinema since movies like Bringing Up Baby, yet its overuse has made the more recent occurrences frustrating to watch. Man Up largely, though not entirely, avoids this issue two ways. Firstly, the meet cute between Nancy and Jack is actually fairly relatable and sweet, with both characters attempting to diffuse an awkward situation in a friendly way. Secondly, the misunderstanding is dealt with somewhat early rather than strung along for the duration of the film to provide a cheap, unnecessary twist in the third act. Nancy reveals that she’s not the woman Jack anticipated going on a date with less than halfway through the movie, and the two characters reassess their situation and advance the plot. The changing relationship dynamics throughout Man Up helps keep the Jack and Nancy romance engaging.

The pace at which all of the characters deliver their lines maintains a lively energy as scenes barrel forward. When the writing hits a false note, as it does a few times in the movie, the bevy of silliness and funny repartee surrounding it elevates the mediocre moments. There’s an infectious tone in Man Up, one that’s played for some broad laughs, but is mostly written to feel real. While the extent to which certain situation are heightened can be preposterous, the performances of both Bell and Pegg ground the film in a version of reality, and provide likable, empathetic characters in the lead roles.

The inconsistency of the humor does put a slight damper on Man Up as a whole. Rory Kinnear plays Sean, an old schoolmate of Nancy’s who had a crush on her, and goes to the extent of manipulating an uncomfortable kiss from her in the women’s bathroom. Kinnear’s performance becomes such a caricature that Sean feels like a character written for a different, dumber film. Sean and Nancy’s “intimate moment” gets interrupted by Jack, who enters the restroom despite Nancy’s not having been away for an egregious amount of time, and doesn’t act apologetic for intruding. The scene registers as forced in comparison to the rest of the absurdity in Man Up, which develops more naturally despite its wackiness. The occasional logic flaw breaks the momentum of some scenes, but is far from enough to disrupt the thoroughly pleasant experience in Man Up.

Fewer and fewer romantic comedies have broke through with audiences in the past few years. The only films in the genre to surpass $100 million at the domestic box office anytime this decade were Just Go With It ($103M), Valentine Day ($110M), and Silver Linings Playbook ($132M). Occasional subversions of the romantic comedy norm (Appropriate Behavior or They Came Together recently) manage to earn attention with critical acclaim, but rarely does the genre produce something quite as comfortable and entertaining as Man Up. The movie likely won’t amass a huge box office haul or garner the type of enthusiastic reactions that its more unique romantic comedy counterparts receive, but its charms are hard to resist and welcomed in an environment lacking quality films of its type. The combination of Bell and Pegg with fast-paced material and a few broad set pieces makes Man Up a completely enjoyable modern rom-com.

Don’t tell Tess Morris that the romantic comedy is dead. As a self-described “romantic comedy scientist,” she’s an ardent defender of not just her upcoming romantic comedy Man Up, but the genre as a whole. Her creative counterpart Ben Palmer wasn’t quite so bullish on the prospects of rom-com prior to reading Tess’ script. “I thought I would know what this script would be, I thought I knew what a British romantic comedy would entail, and it probably wasn’t for me.” Within the first couple of pages of Morris’ script, Palmer recognized that Man Up had qualities to make it an  endearingly entertaining romantic comedy. Together with their lead actors Lake Bell and Simon Pegg, both Palmer and Morris crafted a sweet, funny film that feels fresh amidst its familiar beats.

Chatting with Way Too Indie at the Tribeca Film Festival, Man Up screenwriter Tess Morris and the film’s director Ben Palmer go over their new movie’s entry into a harsh climate for the romantic comedy. They also discuss the benefit of casting great actors to star in your comedy, being inspired by a real-life missed connection, and the origins of the term “cute meet.”

Watch the full video interview on Way Too Indie’s YouTube channel

Romantic comedy, at least in recent years, has sort of taken on a negative connotation. Did you ever find that an obstacle when putting together Man Up?
Tess: No, I absolutely love the romantic comedy genre and I get very angry when people are dismissive of it.

Ben: Careful, Zach.

Tess: Sorry, careful, Zach. Yeah. I get quite irate when people say, “Oh the rom com is dead or whatever,” because I think you never hear that about thrillers or horrors or any other genre of filmmaking. For me, I wanted to write an unashamedly romantic, comedic film. It’s really only now that it’s coming out that we’re finding a lot of people saying to us, “I really enjoyed it! A romantic comedy!” And we’re like, [straining], “Yay!”

Ben: I think that’s good though. I think that’s good. It was certainly an obstacle for me because I’m the first to admit–

Tess: –because you’re an idiot.

Ben: Well, yeah, I am. When I was sent the script, I thought I knew what this script might be. Thought I knew what a British romantic comedy might entail and it probably wasn’t for me. It was within reading the first couple of pages of Tess’ script that you go, “Oh hang on a minute. This is very different. It’s sharp, it is really, and it’s very, very honest. And it’s really funny.”

At no point did it feel sort of schmaltzy or sentimental or patronizing, which was my expectation. At the same time it didn’t feel like it was trying to be snide and cynical, or take the piss out of the genre as well. It was very heartfelt and very emotional. It had all of those ingredients. That’s a very hard thing to pull off.

Tess: I like it when men respond to this film because—I like to think that I just write people. I’m not necessarily only writing the ladies.

It’s not a “chick flick”.
Tess: It’s not a “chick flick” in that sense but at the same time we also want to sell it as a “chick flick” in a good way because it is also a “chick flick” and there’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s kind of like, “It’s a film!” [laughs] It’s a romantic comedy that men and women, cats and dogs, whoever can go see. Of any sexual preference. Of any whatever. I was saying to someone earlier, I think when you come out of the film you should just feel hopeful. Not necessarily about your love life but about life in general.

Ben: When we did the screening somebody came over to me and grabbed me by my shoulders, a guy, and said, “I loved your film! I’m going to go out there and get myself a girlfriend now!” And he all but spun around and ran out the door.

Tess: And then we were like, “We should film him for a documentary!”

The follow up, Manning Up.
Tess: Yeah, exactly.

When did you first start writing the film?
Tess: Well it actually happened to me. I was under the clock at Waterloo and a guy came up and said, “Are you Claire?” And I said, “No, I’m not Claire.” Then he walked away and I thought, “Maybe I should have said that I was Claire.” Maybe just because I’m single and then I didn’t say that because I’m not a total maniac like Nancy. I then thought, “What a great premise for a set up in a film.” From that moment on I had my cute meet. I could then just run with it.

I also wanted to set something over a small period of time. Just mainly because I’m a lazy writer and I find it much easier when I’m given a sort of contained environment to do something in. Also I just feel like there hasn’t been a one crazy night British movie for a while. It was all based on something that actually happened to me and we were saying earlier I wish I could find that dude and thank him.

Ben: Well this is your opportunity.

Tess: Yes, if you’re out there guy that thought—this is like 5 years ago, probably, October 2010.

Ben: Describe him.

Tess: Kind of light brown hair.

Ben: Right. That’s narrowed it down. Waterloo.

Tess: You were a man.

Ben: You came and said something to her.

Tess: You thought I was Claire, you may be married to Claire now, that’s fantastic if you are. If you’re not…anyway, sorry.

You can throw him into the special thanks for the theatrical.
Tess: Exactly.

Is that a Britishism? The “cute meet”? I usually hear it as “meet cute”.
Tess: Yeah, I say it as “cute meet.” I use the Billy Mernit word. He’s a writer who wrote a brilliant book called Writing the Romantic Comedy.

Ben: Tess is a rom com scientist.

Tess: I am a rom com scientist. Badge.

You’re learned.
Tess: Yes, PhD in Romantic Comedy. [Mernit] calls it the “cute meet” and it’s only recently actually that a few people have gone “meet cute.” I don’t really know, actually.

Ben, at what point did you become involved with the script?
Ben: You’d written the script quite a while ago, hadn’t you?

Tess: Yeah, I wrote it on spec in 2011 and then I think you came on in 2013 from the end of the summer.

Ben: Four or five months before shooting. Got sent the script. I thought I knew what to expect and I had to convince myself that I definitely wouldn’t be doing it. That they’d sent it to the wrong person because I have slightly more cynical, irreverent sort of humor I suppose. The sort of comedy that I normally do.

So I thought—I was away on holiday—I’ll look at this on my phone, I’ll read the first 10 pages maybe and then I’ll politely say no. And I didn’t, I read the whole thing because she’s a brilliant writer. It suckered me in within the first couple of pages and it totally challenged my expectations of a romantic comedy. So I finished that and found my agent and said I’d love to do this.

I know you mentioned that cute meet actually happened to you, but that whole misunderstanding as the impetus for romance it’s kind of a staple of the romantic comedy. Were there influences you were drawing from when you were putting together Man Up?
Tess: I would say what I definitely had a sense of is [that] I wanted to find a modern way to do it. I supposed the one that did it well quite recently was The Proposal but then he’s pretending to be someone else rather than mistaken kind of identity. I wanted to find a way to have two people meet without knowing anything about each other which is very, very difficult in the modern world. I’m basically a bit of an Internet detective. If someone says to me, “Do you wanna get set up with a guy?” Give me a name and a location and I’ll know everything about him. I’m not even on Facebook and I can do that. Sounds a bit stalkery [laughs].

It’s impressive Googling.
Ben: Terrifying Googling.

Tess: But the point is that I thought for the audience [that] I’m not, for the sake of the audience, that I’m not going to make a whole film that is about someone pretending to be someone that they’re not. I didn’t want to do that. I want her to reveal who she is within that end of act one beginning of act two sort of sequence. I definitely thought, “Right. How can I do this and make it believable?”

That’s the thing. Not to be too hard on the romantic comedy but a lot of the ones you see and don’t like it’s just that the believability, the authenticity isn’t there. Is it the characterization of these two, of Nancy, that makes Man Up work much better?
Tess: I think it’s a combo.

Ben: It’s a lot of everything like that.

Tess: I obviously wrote them like that and then we got a dream team of Pegg and Bell to bring them to life for us.

Ben: There’s so many facets that go into it. It’s the storytelling, obviously, and it’s not feeling like you’re being patronized. Or told how to feel. In combination with that you’ve got your two leads. The film effectively lives or dies by the chemistry of those two performances. Those two performers. Thankfully with Simon and Lake they are so brilliant and they had that sort of spark from the first time we did the read through. When Lake came over from the States and sat with Simon we did like one blast through the script. They were so…

Tess: They just liked each other.

Ben: Yeah, they’re funny performers and they would crash each other’s lines. There was a real spark but also it felt very real. It’s how people talk to each other. It’s not heavy handed or cloying.

How did Lake Bell and Simon Pegg first get involved and did you format the script with them in mind?
Tess: Well we got Simon first and that was brilliant because he was actually about six months before Lake. Maybe a bit before. I actually did a draft with Simon. He obviously had some thoughts, some notes, and it was obviously just fantastic for me. I remember him going to me, “Can I sort of, like, send you some notes?” And I was like, “Uh, yes! You’re like one of my favorite writers. Really! Please! Send me your notes!”

So he did that and brought loads more to Jack. I suppose the draft he read maybe was slightly more Nancy-centric, and obviously because Nancy is very much based on sort of…me. I loathe to say that, exposing soul. But you know what I mean, I felt like I had definitely nailed her and I remember Simon saying to me, “I like Jack but he’s a bit of an idiot, isn’t he?” I said, “Yes, that’s exactly what he is.” So it was great having his kind of input. His comic timing is genius obviously.

Then Lake came on board a bit later. It’s quite interesting. Two actors who also write… But it was like a dream scenario. Lake did exactly the same as Simon in terms of offering up her own, “Can I say it like that? What about this?” So really I got incredibly lucky. I can imagine if you got actors that don’t write but want to write. But I had Lake & Simon who were two brilliant writers going to me, like, “What about that bit? What about that bit?” I remember having a big conversation with Simon about the Barbie joke on the train. Lots of stuff like that.

Ben: Based on that read through because they were so messy with their dialog, like we do. You talk over people’s lines, you don’t hold back. That all helps with that authenticity that you’re talking about and that realism. When they did this read through you’re going, “We definitely need to cross-shoot this whole film.”

Which is what we did. Then that gave us the freedom to shoot multiple, multiple takes. So you do those first few takes where you preserve everything in the script and you don’t overlap any of the lines. Then you crank it up faster and faster.

It has that very ping-pongy nature to the dialog. How much of that is in the script and how much of that is just through the rehearsing and practicing of these scenes?
Ben: There’s a lot in the script. There’s a lot in the script straight away and that was the enticing thing from the off. That Tess had captured that dialog and that banter so perfectly.

Tess: I love dialog. It’s my favorite thing—I was going to say in film but just in life. I love listening to how people talk. I’m a bit weird like that, I’ll always have my notepad on me and if people say things—you can’t really be friends with me because things will end up in a film that you have said.

Ben: Let that be a warning.

How different or similar then is it from the one you first wrote or read?
Tess: It’s not different. I mean, obviously I’d say that, I wrote it.

Ben: There’s the usual cutting and trimming just to get that pace and that energy throughout.

Tess: We had a scene that we lost. I don’t know if it’s going to be in the deleted scenes but the “More Than Words” thing. It was quite a key scene where Simon and Lake sing “More Than Words” by Extreme. We have to put that on the internet somewhere at some point. But the problem is they got too good at it, they were too good at singing. They were like amazing.

Ben: There was restructuring as we were going along just a little bit. But I think because it was tightly script, the final film feels like there should be elements of improvisation in there because there’s a naturalism to it. There’s obviously quite heightened, big set pieces, but the core of it feels very realistic.

In a way it’s a compliment if people think that people think it isn’t heavily scripted. It means you’re doing something right. I think that was the approach, making those characters and that dialog feel as real and as honest as possible so then when you hit those more farcical set pieces you believe those characters and you roll with it. You don’t question it in a way.

There’s some very big moments and Sean is quite a heightened character but your bedrock of Jack and Nancy, you’re in and you’ve got them. So people just buy it after then.

And there’s a building to that absurdity as well.
Tess: Yeah, exactly. It builds. When I watch it now with people seeing it for the first time I’m really acutely aware how in the third act people suddenly go, “Ahhh.” Because I think they suddenly realize what’s been plotted for them. Someone was saying the second time they saw it they got even more from it the second time. I think there are quite a lot of jokes that maybe you could miss in the first viewing of it. Basically pay to go and see it twice.

Ben: It’s a very mercenary approach. But you need to I think.

Tess: Yes. Twice. Twice viewed.

With films like In The Company of Men and The Shape of Things already in his filmography, Neil LaBute has developed a reputation for creating provocative, occasionally inflammatory material. Which is why, at least in part, LaBute ventured to develop a “sweeter” project in Dirty Weekend. The film stars Matthew Broderick and Alice Eve as work colleagues whose business trip gets diverted to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they ponder indulging in a “dirty weekend” away from their significant others. Despite any intended sweetness, the movie still proved too challenging for at least one pair of movie-goers. “I had one couple close to me [leave] together,” LaBute acknowledges. “It didn’t seem to come at a point, like, ‘Oh, that’s offensive’… Two thirds of the way in they realized this wasn’t Furious 7.”

Speaking with Way Too Indie at the Tribeca Film Festival, LaBute, as well Dirty Weekend actors Gia Crovatin & Phil Burke, discuss the new movie’s enigmatic characters, the idiom that inspired the movie, and Phil’s favorite ballooning spots.

What was the initial inspiration for the film?
Neil: Probably the title. When you hear that term… I work over in England every so often, and when I first heard it I thought, “Oh that’s a good one! That’s a good title. But what’s a story that goes with it?” So I started writing a script that was going to take place in England. Made sense, right? We get the chance to finally make it, [we] had to make it in the States. We’ve got to find a place, all the things that go into independent filmmaking. All the economic madness of ‘Hey, we’ll have to do it here. Try and make this work.’

So we made Albuquerque work for Albuquerque, but having worked with Alice Eve before, who does a very credible American dialect, I said, ‘You know what, this time let’s go with the English dialect. You’ll be the one to explain what a dirty weekend is. Coming from you it will make sense.’ I didn’t want to give up the title, but for a couple of Americans it didn’t make quite as much sense.

If it had been set in England do you think you would have had her do an American accent?
Neil: It’s possible. Yeah, I mean we certainly thought about it when we did Some Velvet Morning. We knew in the beginning that in the end she would her dialect, but it made more sense to me because she actually is English to have her switch and be American. It was like, “Wait, she’s really English!” So it was nice to have her use her own dialect, and be the one to explain what [a dirty weekend] was.

But that just lead to this idea of a buddy movie. A road picture about two people who weren’t in love and had their own kind of private, very specific thing that’s going on in their personal lives. And how we don’t really know the people we’re around. We’re around so many different people, it’s not like we’re in the same office for ten years, so we’re constantly around people and so you know them even less. As intimate as it suddenly feels for two or three weeks, you become quite close but you are actually working hard enough and fast enough that you don’t really know them very well.

It’s one of those things where it’s interesting to see two people discovering things about each other that doesn’t lead to a romance. That they’re still in kind of the same place that they were. That they’ll probably just go on with that. What I liked about it, the events that took place weren’t life changing. I think once he figured out what had happened, he does it again. He doesn’t go, “Oh, I shouldn’t do that,” he tries it again. Then it’s like, “Wait a minute, maybe that’s not the answer to life. Maybe I still have all my problems, I should just go home and deal with that.” One thing kind of begets the next thing.

I thought it was curious how you mentioned sweetness at the premiere, I’m not sure it’s a word that you could attribute to the movie if it had come from most other filmmakers, but I totally see it with your movie. It’s there, but there’s all this content that’s much less heart-warming. Was the sweetness your driving force in putting the characters together?
Neil: No, I think it happens in the process. Actors tend to warm up the character because they’re alive and tangible. You go, “Oh, they’re just like me. They have problems and so I can identify with that person.” So you put some actors together, they start breathing life into those characters, and suddenly I saw how real those people were. Then you start carving away at that and thinking, “How can I make that the feel of the movie?”

As strange as the little odyssey is that they’re on, it’s really coming from a place of desire and frustration and wanting a real connection in their lives. So I think the same for [Gia’s] character [and Phil’s character] who’s just driving around and picking people up all the time, trying to make connections with people. It’s just about frustration, desire and that idea of connecting with someone.

Gia and Phil, how did you first get involved with Dirty Weekend?
Gia: I worked with Neil before in a lot of theater. He came to me with the script and said, “I think I have a sweet, little role here.” I read it and I thought it was really charming. I felt the whole script was charming and knowing that Matthew Broderick was involved, and Alice Eve–

Phil: –And Phil Burle.

Gia: I just think they’re both so awesome.

Phil: And Phil Burke.

Gia: I’m getting there.

Neil: She’s working her way up to you.

Gia: I just knew I wanted to be a part of it and part of telling that kind of a story about people who are trying to figure out how to deal with problems. My kind of movies are people who are sitting there and actually figuring out, discussing how they’re going to fix a problem.

I guess as an actor that’s what you really want to sink your teeth into is the figuring out of the problem, and how you come to a decision. So that’s what was exciting to me. And then Phil, who I’ve worked with before. Not together, but in the show Hell on Wheels.

Phil: I think we’ve actually done like three, four projects together?

Gia: Several projects together.

Phil: But we’ve never actually worked together.

Gia: So when I heard that he was a part of it, I was like, “Damn!”

Neil: That’s strange, I never realized that.

Phil: As for me, Neil gave me a call because he knew I was a big balloon enthusiast. So he was like, “What do you think about New Mexico?” I said, “It’s probably my favorite balloon spot on earth.” So he was like, “Well listen, man. I’m kind of doing this thing, you want to come down?” And I said, “Let me just fold my balloon into my backpack and I’ll head down to Albuquerque.” So I was very chuffed and very grateful to have the opportunity. Where he goes, I will follow.

Gia: Me too.

Neil: Thank you guys.

Phil: Yeah, absolutely. We’ve worked together before, and like I said, I mean that in all sincerity. I just love the conversations he brings up. Everybody last night was like, “What’d you think about it? What’d you think about it?”

Gia: All the theories.

Phil: “You know, what’s going on.” I love the conversation between these two people. The fact that it’s a practical relationship because they’re work colleagues. The fact that everybody’s got secrets. We don’t know the people who we actually spend so much time with. That conversation about discovery of each other but also, “Do I like this? Do I not like this? What’s up? Do I taste the rainbow again? I don’t know. Am I a big fan of Skittles? I’m not sure, I’m going to buy another pack and see how it goes.”

Neil: What a strange and wonderful analogy.

Phil: It was just a gift. It was always a gift to work with Neil. And Gia. Even though we haven’t worked together.

Gia: But we have. IMDB says we have.

Neil: Maybe that’s what the gift is. To not actually work together.

Phil: Basically we’re magnets. Pointing at each other but can never touch. Negative polarities.

Gia: It’s happening.

Neil: I’ve never understood [polarity] until you just did [that]. It never made sense to me. So many teachers tried to explain it and you just had a breakthrough.

There’s so much that’s left unsaid between these characters, these characters remain enigmas to a degree. How much do you consciously leave out the material that the audience may want to know but doesn’t necessarily need to know?
Gia: Are we talking about subtext?

Neil: Ew. I hope not. Well it was funny last night hearing a question about the brother and sister, and / or, “Are they really brother and sister?”

Gia: “They’re not really brother and sister.”

Neil: People kind of want things to work out for them so it’s just like, “Make me feel better.”

“Do they have to be brother and sister?”
Neil: Yeah. For having just seen it, people built a relatively elaborate backstory for as to why they really weren’t [brother and sister]. About how protective it was for their psychological well-being. I was like, “You thought about this a lot more than I did really. I just wrote down a brother and sister and you guys have found so many ways to make them not brother and sister.” It’s sort of whatever works for you. I think that life rarely explains itself, at least not in an hour and a half. People are funny and complex, not everything works out the way you think.

That’s ultimately why it was important that once Matt’s character found [Gia] was to go through with it again, and not learn a lesson before he did that. Here’s a guy who’s so uncertain about how he felt the experience he had that he could have walked away without having it again but he probably should have it again. And then realize that it’s not the key to the universe. Same for Alice, that she was left in a place that she’s uncertain about her future, her relationship. All they know is they still have a job and these relationships are kind of going good or bad and that life will go on. This guy doesn’t have a profound reawakening, he just wanted to get home. Maybe change his life a little bit.

That’s sometimes the best stories. The small ones. So for me, it was one worth telling. To find something that was different than what I’d done before and didn’t have all the answers. I think my job is to raise questions, not to provide answers.

Then in portraying those characters, is there anything you have to do as an actor to fill in those details that aren’t provided in the script?
Phil: [to Gia] Did you try going out and being a prostitute?

Gia closes her mouth and mimes locking a key

Gia: Hookers never tell.

Neil: Hooker with a heart of platinum.

Gia: I think that you should, for yourself, have a sense of a backstory. It’s fun. I mean, come on. It’s super fun to create stuff. I know that Phil brought so much to his character. The hula lady. Your Henry V script.

Neil: Just physical things he brought with him.

Phil: Physical things.

Gia: Physical choices.

Phil: And my balloons.

Gia: And your balloons. But it’s fun to create the stuff that’s left unsaid, but also to leave room for on the day, when you get there, the surprises that magically happen in filmmaking. When you’re with another person and navigating what’s happening. So for me, it’s the balance of having the two. Honestly, Neil’s words are so perfectly chosen. The script is just right on, and how you want it, that you don’t really need to do a whole lot more. It’s there for you so you go with that and I think that’s the preparation that you need.

Phil: I think I would agree. I think G.C. is nailing it down.

[Gia throws finger guns]

Phil: And with the flare.

Neil: Authentic gang–

Gia: Albuquerque!

Phil: I spent the movie in a cab, but what I like to do for a lot of projects I’m with I like to try and be everybody else’s character. So I was a prostitute for a couple of days in New York which made a lot of money. Which was great. My girlfriend didn’t like it very much, especially with all those guys I was hanging out with. Which really actually brought me to these gay clubs, which funny enough, I don’t know how that happened.

Neil: You’ve gone down the rabbit hole.

Phil: It’s one of those things when you’re prepping for a role you want to get as informed as possible. New York’s a great place to do that especially when you want to have dirty choices that lead to dirty weekends. Boom!

Jason Sudeikis is primed this year to be our ’90s rom-com Tom Hanks if we let him. With two romantic comedies out, both of which played at Tribeca, he’s smoothly proving he is up to the challenge of being a leading, wooing man. With the upcoming Sleeping With Other People, he has the sexy friendship-turned-romantic bit down à la Tom Hank’s in You’ve Got Mail, (though decidedly more modern and with a lot more sex), and in Tumbledown he zones in on the hopeless widower meets potential enemy turned love interest like Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle—but with the roles reversed and more antagonistic. Ok, so he’s not as wholesome-sex-symbol as Hanks, but when it comes to melding the old rom with the new com, he does an excellent job. Unfortunately the sparse and rather predictable small-town comedy of Tumbledown isn’t much for Sudeikis to work with, and he’s not even this film’s leading role.

Rebecca Hall is the film’s lead, playing Hannah, the widow of an Iron and Wine-style folk musician named Hunter with a huge following. It’s been a few years since his death and, as a sometime writer and journalist, she decides to try and tackle writing his biography. She spends a lot of time in their wooden lake cabin in Maine, near the town she grew up in, hanging with her two pit bulls and occasionally getting it on with local meathead Curtis (Joe Manganiello). Almost immediately after delving into the biography, a new guy shows up in town, Sudeikis’s Andrew McDonnell, an academic with a passion for Hunter’s music. He’s been leaving Hannah messages, which, if she hadn’t ignored them, would have tipped her off that Andrew is also starting a biography of Hunter. Immediately defensive, and because people don’t act all that rashly in rom-coms, she steals Andrew’s writing journal from his hotel and begrudgingly realizes he’s a pretty great writer. But she sends him packing anyway, determined to do this herself.

Griffin Dunne plays her friend, a bookstore owner, and the local newspaperman. When she hands off her first few pages of the book, he gives her some honest feedback. She has a series of memories, but they don’t a good book make. So Hannah hires Andrew to write the book with her. He moves in temporarily to get to work, and there is immediate animosity between the two. Hannah isn’t quite sensitive enough to his ego and he’s a little too familiar and assuming when it comes to discussing her dead husband.

Together they (of course) discover a few new things about Hunter, and each other. The real lessons lie in Andrew’s assumptions about Hunter, entirely based on his own life hardships and the way he thinks a talented musician’s life should look. Hannah has the expected problem of letting go of her dead husband.

Hall and Sudeikis have a reasonable amount of chemistry in the film. Their characters play into a few devices, but there are enough outside revelations to maintain interest in their ongoing story. Hall, who seems best when playing endearingly difficult, is easy to like. But, as sometimes happens, her own personality is shadowed by the interestingness of her dead husband. If first timer Sean Mewshaw (along with screenwriter Desiree Van Til) had thought to include more back story about what brought Hunter and Hannah together, it may have helped round her out a bit.

Dianna Agron shows up as Andrew’s throw-away girlfriend, a useless character meant only to contrast with how different she is from Hannah. And Blythe Danner and Richard Masur are charming as Hannah’s parents, if only given about one scene apiece of meaty material.

Tumbledown is tender, but not compelling. It’s a comedy where the tension is far more interesting to watch than the eventual coming together. The more dramatic bits, focusing on Hunter’s death and the impact of losing the love of one’s life, provoke the most emotional response, whereas the romance playing out seems to pale in comparison to the one Hannah already had. The music of the film, sung by Damien Jurado, is sad, lilting, and makes Hunter an easily believable genius. All of the elements making up Hannah—her community, family, and past—make the film a cute watch. Her progressing relationship with Andrew doesn’t compel quite as much as the rest. Overall, Tumbledown is a pleasant and sweet tempered film, and Hall and Sudeikis are lovely though simple in it, but it certainly isn’t aiming to be one of the great roms or coms of the century.

While they were simultaneously attending NYU, Shut Up and Drive actress Sarah Sutherland had heard buzz about the film’s director Melanie Shaw. “She was sort of this golden child of Tisch film,” she mentions in Way Too Indie’s interview with the Shut Up and Drive cast. Shaw’s process of working with actors, collaborating through improv to develop a character, was a prospect that excited many of the actors in Shaw’s films. It’s also something that allows the world in Shut Up and Drive to feel authentic, with fully formed characters occupying even the most minor roles.

In Melanie Shaw’s interview with Way Too Indie, the fresh filmmaker discusses her method of incorporating improv into scripts, how films evolve through the production process, and her self-critical thoughts while watching her films.

Was your premiere a fun day or do you get nervous for things like that?
Oh, sitting there watching anything you do — you can’t [laughs]. All you see is like, “I could have done that, and I could have done that. What is going on?” That’s all that you see, you don’t see anything [you like] — but everyone once in a while you pick up something you like. But that is what it’s like.

When did you start working on Shut Up and Drive? When did the idea first come to you?
Two of my friends came up with the story. My friends were Zoë Worth, who’s in the film, and Kelsey McNamee — they brought it this to me, we developed it together. We have a process of doing a lot of a lot of improv. We will develop a specific story for specific actors, the characters for them, and work on it with them. Do scenes with improv, put that into a script, improv again, put that back in a script and keep going. Then Sarah [Sutherland] came along and we began to really craft these parts to make them for Zoë and Sarah.

So it all came out of rehearsals and practicing it together?
Yeah.

The characters are then very much geared for these actresses.
Yeah, exactly. Each actress had a lot of input into their part, and really were a part of coming up with the script, which is kind of an incredible thing. That way you can really show off the performances. I just think it’s a more interesting way of shooting.

How much time were you actually in the production process, actually making the movie?
Pretty short; very short shoot. I want to say two weeks but it was a little more than that. Two and a half weeks, very short shoot.

You’re fitting a lot into a small period of time. How’d you accommodate for such a short shoot?
I thought that one of the biggest [obstacles] was — basically, I’m used to working with the same few people and oftentimes they’re my friends. I’ve been doing that for a while. Just having new people and learning very quickly how to talk to them, how to communicate with people that you don’t really have a way communicating [with] already. I think that that was the biggest thing.

How different does this movie look than when you first envisioned it?
I think that it looks really different but I think that all films do that. Every film changes so many times and I think you change the film to go with the actors, or to go with different things. Hopefully you still keep what it was always supposed to be. I would say that the film changes when you write it, it changes when you cast it, it changes when you shoot it, it changes when you edit it.

Is there something you can identify from that production process that influenced the final movie?
What I do see is I see elements of each of actors being brought into the characters. It’s incredible to see them in the film. I guess that’s what I like to see in performances so that’s what I was interested in.

Are you working on anything else coming up after Shut Up and Drive?
I’ve been doing a short with one of the actors who’s in this film, the guy who plays Milo, and I guess that’s it? Small shoots.

Shut Up and Drive co-stars Zoë Worth and Sarah Sutherland attended NYU at the same time as their film’s director Melanie Shaw; however, Zoë & Sarah’s relationship extends even further back than college. Friends since the age of 12, the two actresses forgo any seeming familiarity with one another in their roles of Laura and Jane. In Shut Up and Drive, Sutherland’s Jane becomes anxious when her boyfriend Austin (Morgan Krantz) suddenly moves to New Orleans shortly after his childhood friend (Worth’s Laura) starts to stay in their home. Unable to live together without Austin around, the two women embark on a road trip from Los Angeles to New Orleans, forming a bond along the way.

In an interview with Way Too Indie, Zoë Worth, Sarah Sutherland and Morgan Krantz, as well as the film’s director Melanie Shaw, discuss “unknowing” each other, watching the film with an audience for the first time, and their deep love of Marfa, Texas.

How was your premiere day?
Zoë: I thought it was great, I thought it was so crazy, and when I got on stage for the Q&A I thought the room looked really big.

Sarah: Morgan and I had the unique experience of watching the film for the first time at the actual premiere, which is really exciting and made it [an] extra high octane experience.

What’s that experience like of seeing something you’re in for the first time with a live audience?
Sarah: I don’t typically watch myself so that was the first time I sat through an entire film I’ve been in, let alone one I haven’t seen.

Zoë: You were such a big, brave dog I thought.

Sarah: Zoë held my hand! [laughs]

Zoë: It was great. It was really impressive. I left twice during the movie. I was singing.

Couldn’t be in the room for the singing scene?
Zoë: Uh, no. Not in surround sound.

Morgan: Really?

Zoë: No. Not the first time. Tonight I might watch it.

Morgan: I thought your singing was great.

Zoë: Thanks babe. Thanks.

So Zoë you were the co-creator of the story, how’d that first come about?
Zoë: Well, we have a friend named Kelsey McNamee. We were working in our theater company and after meeting one night we were like — wasn’t it really late at night or something?

Melanie: Yeah, or it became really late.

Zoë: It became late at night. The idea came because — it’s based on some real things, some not real things.

Melanie: We just stayed up talking all night. It came from some of the relationship and then it was sort of re-developed around Zoë and Sarah later.

Zoë: Yeah, but the “taking someone out of the picture” instigated a lot of the fiction parts.

Melanie: You and Kelsey were just getting to know each other which was kind of interesting, too.

Zoë: Yeah, and we were strangers and had this kind of loaded experience of being someone’s close, close friend. Being someone’s girlfriend.

How long did you two cultivate this idea until you started to assemble a cast?
Melanie: At least a year.

Zoë: Really? Is that true? I think you might be right. I think it might have been summer to summer. I talked to Sarah about it before that, probably six months. When we came to you, Sarah, did we have a script or did we have just ideas?

Sarah: No, there was basically a really detailed outline but Zoë was very stealthy about it where she came over to my apartment and talked to me about this story without saying she had me in mind for the part. Then she wanted me to meet Mel and sort of randomly called me and asked if I wanted to go to Disneyland the next day. So we go to Disneyland together and unbeknownst to me, I think Mel just wanted to get a sense of Zoë & I’s chemistry and if it made sense before she said anything.

At the same time I was going to [theater company] meetings. A lot of people write work and put up scenes. Zoë and I would do some work together. When I look back on it, it’s quite evident that the process was coming together but I was actually really surprised and profoundly flattered when they asked me to do it.

What was your initial reaction to what they brought to you?
Sarah: Oh, I loved it! I mean that’s the thing, I was so excited. Zoë and I talked for at least an hour and a half or two hours about this story.

Zoë: The first day.

Sarah: They were such cool characters and only the seeds in the beginning of what they came to be. Also I had heard such beautiful things about Mel. Zoe, Mel & I went to NYU and she was sort of this golden child of Tisch film that I had heard wind of [laughs]. I had also heard a lot because Zoë had worked with her prior, [I heard] about her process of working with actors and getting together, doing improvs. The emphasis on character and collaboration and improv. That kind of work is so exciting to me so it was definitely a really easy decision.

Morgan: When we started we just talked a lot in preparing for it about the relationships and the backstory and stuff like that. I was mostly trying to be conscious of the level of “douchery” with the character. Just because I thought it was a delicate thing. It was good seeing it, I feel like we did a great job. Mel was really helpful in guiding that. I think the process of [making] it really helped that character not be some sort of one-dimensional, “Oh yeah, he’s an asshole.”

Because we were a little looser with the dialog and stuff, I think that we achieved that he’s real. He’s self-centered but it’s not obvious. It was actually a really interesting thing thinking of what the real version of a self-centered person. Not like the movie version. We see it represented in movies and stuff all the time. “Oh yeah, he’s the douchey actor.” But the real version was interesting to reflect on as an actor, you know what I mean? When am I actually being self-centered?

I love the moment when she faints and then I’m like, “I’m going to go get you water,” but then I never come back. I just end up on the telephone. That’s stuff that I feel like I’m totally capable of. I think it was a fun line that I was trying to walk with them.

Sarah and Zoë, you mentioned at the premiere you’ve been friends since you were 12. What was it like adopting a different dynamic for this film?
Sarah: Well to begin with we’re really close in real life. I’ll just speak to Jane specifically, obviously when you’re playing a character you want to empathize with them. I have a lot of affection for Jane, but I think in general she’s more of a co-dependent, kind of needy character. [She’s] really grappling with her sense of self and ability to stand up, to say no. These things that I don’t necessarily identify with. So by way of playing a character that’s so different, immediately it changed our dynamic in the process of doing it.

Zoë: I’ll speak about being Sarah’s friend, Sarah is definitely not someone that defines herself through other people. Jane I feel her starting place in the film is definitely defining her life through her boyfriend. For me, unknowing each other is one big change. Then being strangers and getting to know each other that’s obviously something new.

My character Laura — Mel and I talked a lot about this idea of having no context. I feel like between Laura’s socioeconomic background, her creative passion and just her really youthful personality, I think that she’s someone who’s not bound by any rules. I think that that’s definitely different than me. I access my purest, most fun, passionate, creative self playing that role. She has no structure, is sort of how it is. That’s a really fun place to be to create from. Her influence was key in playing the part.

Sarah: I think also that our actual relationship in life helped us at points in the movie when the characters are starting to get to know each other better. The tenderness.

For the production you had to take the road trip your characters take, was there a favorite stop along the way?
Sarah: My favorite, I think this is what most people, was probably Marfa just because it’s such an unusual place to be privy to. I love New Mexico as well, I had never been there. It was incredibly beautiful, those sprawling landscapes.

Zoë: My favorite was Marfa, too.

Melanie: Marfa was the greatest.

Zoë: It was so fun and we were there for the longest time. I would say New Orleans was amazing, which it was, but we were there so quickly that I didn’t get to know it. I feel like I got to know Marfa, especially because it’s so small we did get to know Marfa. It’s only a few blocks.

Sarah: I had to say that the county fair actually was also a highlight just because it was the most unusual experience that we otherwise wouldn’t be privy to.

Zoë: That was crazy.

Sarah: Because Melissa is committed to authenticity and we were in the real locations.

Zoë: Then we stumbled into real longhorns. A real longhorn ranch. That was real.

Just a happy accident of the shoot?
Zoë: Yeah! Within an hour of shooting we had met them.

If Blockbuster still existed (R.I.P.), Andrew Renzi’s Franny would be the equivalent of picking a family friendly VHS with a cover featuring an audacious aristocrat who looks amusingly like he’s about to learn a thing or two about what really matters in life, only to get home, stick it in the VHS player and discover you’ve actually gotten a film about a drug addict that happens to have money. A little jarring to say the least. Insert a score that would actually fit that fun-loving aristocrat comedy and feels ridiculously out-of-place in this more serious character study and the film feels like it has the cinematic equivalent of body dysmorphia.

Beginning with Dakota Fanning’s Olivia preparing to go off to college as her parents lay down the final decisions on the children’s hospital they are founding with their longtime friend Franny (Richard Gere), things are of course a little too happy to last. And they don’t, almost immediately Franny and her parents get into a horrific car accident that results in Olivia’s parents dying. Flash forward five years and Franny, also injured in the crash, lives a secluded life of luxury, maintained by a morphine addiction that mellows him out enough to at least sometimes hang out with the children at his hospital. Olivia calls from out of the blue one day. She’s married, she’s pregnant, and her doctor husband needs a job. As much addicted to philanthropy as he is morphine, Franny is more than happy to find Luke (Theo James) a position at his hospital.

Upon returning to Philadelphia, Olivia tries to pick up with Franny, guilty about having left when she did, distraught by her own grief. Franny is thrilled to have Poodles (as he calls her) back in his life, and eager to recreate the relationship he had with her parents, he begins to deluge the young couple with gifts. Franny’s morphine addiction catches up to him as quickly as the reality of him not being able to recreate the past does as well.

Mood-wise, the film is all over the place. The music tries to capture Franny’s wealth and pomp but seems to have missed the note that he’s also a crazed drug addict. A couple skin-crawling moments of drug addiction keeps things feeling uneasy. Fanning is barely given lines in the film, let alone a character, so it’s no surprise that what should be the driving relationship of the film ends up as lip service and static. Instead Renzi (who takes his first foray into drama with this film, and also wrote it) focuses on Luke and Franny’s strange power-play bromance.

Whether he’s in denial of his own place in life, Gere weirdly comes across as a younger actor trying to play an older man. He’s got the rich eccentric thing, but not enough of the world-weariness. James is probably the strongest performance of the film, but it’s a little too easy to see his Insurgent bad-boy at play, not enough softness with Olivia to even things out. Fanning’s constant wide-eyes and warm voice make Olivia likable, but she’s shortchanged in the writing and thus underutilized.

Franny clearly wants to be a great many things. Heartwarming, emotional, a character study, and an acting platform; it takes two hours to come to a conclusion that would take two minutes in reality. If only more of Franny’s outgoing wealth-induced charm felt real it may have tipped the scale toward an enjoyable film, but in the end the pity one feels leaving the theater is likely to be geared more toward their own wasted time then to anything happening to the characters.

Diane Bell’s second film melds her Masters degree in Mental Philosophy and her experience as a yogi in a film that thoughtfully, though somewhat obviously, questions the difference between living peacefully and living indifferently. The philosophical depth of the film remains somewhat shallow, building to an inevitable conclusion, albeit one that is incredibly satisfying. Bell, who also wrote the script, takes two modern opposites, a zen-like yoga instructor and an abused sex worker, to explore whether violence is an acceptable way to combat violence. Bell really only skims the surface of so broad a question, however, by providing a scenario where very few alternatives are provided.

The yogi is May (Jessica Biel), a yoga instructor about to open her own studio with her boyfriend Dex (Edi Gathegi). She’s been trying to track down her birth family and finally gets real news from the private investigator, she has a sister, and she’s not very far away. Despite Dex’s cavalier comments that May should wait to reach out to her newfound sister so she’s not distracted from their work, May can’t wait to connect with the sister she never had. Appearing on her doorstep her sister Susan (Zosia Mamet), or Shiva as her friends call her, is just as surprised to learn about May. Their mother died when Shiva was young, and she was put into the foster system and then fell in with her current boyfriend Cody (Joe Anderson), an emotionally and physically abusive type.

In trying to connect with her sister, May quickly learns Shiva has led a very different life then her own and is currently in a bad spot. Shiva, without any shame, admits to being a sex worker, Cody serving as her pimp, and makes it clear to May she doesn’t require any saving. May and Shiva get away for a night to May’s mother’s house in Santa Barbara without telling their respective significant others. May seems to want to hide from the results of the success she’s built, and Shiva may or may not be taking advantage of May’s good intentions.

Their bond appears to be mostly built on their shared bloodline, their obvious cultural differences being what they are. But when things start to heat up for Shiva, as Cody’s jealousy of her new relationship gets dark, and as all the privileged people in May’s life encourage her to turn a blind eye and ignore Shiva’s situation, the tension inside of May builds to a breaking point. Though it’s less a breaking point, and more a path that has been rather clearly laid out for her.

Biel and Mamet have an easy chemistry, if not especially strong. Biel hasn’t played this squeaky clean since 7th Heaven, and Mamet shreds her vapid, material girl image as Shoshanna from Girls well enough, aided by some heavy eyeliner. Her ambiguity and Neither of them seems too far out of their comfort zone, but play their parts well. Unfortunately the other characters play their roles with clear intention to serve their purpose to the story.

May’s mother, played by Kate Burton, is clearly sheltered, treating Shiva with clear disdain, and keeping her conversation with May focused on her intentions to re-decorate her already up-to-date manicured bedroom. Dax is so un-supportive it’s hard to believe May and he are destined to last, and he serves to push May away conveniently. And Cody is so blatantly abusive, one can hardly imagine a different fate for him.

The film, much of which is spent in May’s awesome vintage car, keeps up its rather neutral stance with some similarly neutral tones. The music also present, but un-intruding. It feels as though Bell was maybe attempting some juxtaposition between May’s zen-like life and Shiva’s chaotic and violent one, but she could have taken it a few notches further to better effect. But for all of its line-riding, Bleeding Heart does still feel especially gratifying in its conclusion. Bell tells a predictable tale, but it comes as a good reminder. She may not be trying to win the war on complacency, but she provides a soft-spoken genuflection toward the power of community.

A Congolese farmer with hopes of cashing in on a trade deal finds himself stuck in Guangzhou when an order on political t-shirts is complete months after the Democratic Republic of Congo’s presidential elections. An immigrant in a distant, unfamiliar land, Lebrun (Lebrun Iko Isibangi) struggles to adapt to life in Canton and the foreign culture surrounding him. The comedic docudrama Stranded in Canton, from Swedish artist Måns Månsson, is holding its North American Premiere at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival; however, its intriguing premise is hindered by the inertia of its story.

Lebrun approaches his potential business transactions with little forethought. Arriving in China with big dreams but few practical skills, his hopefulness gets in the way of his entrepreneurial aspirations. Lebrun invests all his energy into half-baked ideas without a suitable backup plan to which he can revert. As his attempts continue to fail, Lebrun maintains a frustratingly unfazed outlook. His friends and acquaintances offer him advice, but Lebrun ignores their suggestions, determined to prove his worth as a businessman.

The eclectic cast of characters, as well as the unique perspective into burgeoning trade markets between Asia & Africa, provide a compelling backdrop for Stranded in Canton’s story, but the way the film belabors its central conflict grows tiring. There’s little developing within Stranded in Canton, and not much mood to reflect on. Måns Månsson’s movie is an inert examination into the life of an ineffectual would-be trader.

As the modern need for new programmers grows rapidly, a disproportionately low amount of women have filled those jobs. Despite American women earning 57% of college degrees, they represent less than 20% of computer science graduates. When director Robin Hauser Reynolds asks a group of young girls at the beginning of her documentary Code: Debugging the Gender Gap what they think a computer programmer looks like, the girls nearly unanimously respond with some version of, “a man.” By interviewing several high-profile female programmers and mining their insights, Reynolds seeks to uncover the obstacles that women face in pursuing math & science professions.

The documentary, making its World Premiere at Tribeca, provides a historical overview of the role women played in computer technologies, from Ada Lovelace to the programmers at Etsy. Highlighting the fluctuating percentage of the workforce made up of women through the decades, Reynolds pinpoints a culture shift in the 80s to 90s as a primary negative influence for women. Though the film largely avoids specifics, it emphasizes that the prevalence of the nerdy guy and “brogrammer” stereotypes have played a major factor.

The case presented argues that societal preconceptions for who should or shouldn’t become a computer programmer cause men and women to view women unfavorably for those jobs, both in how women are treated and how they perceive themselves. There is plenty of convincing evidence, but very little of what’s in the film comes as a surprise. Code: Debugging the Gender Gap is totally well-intentioned, but it’s an entry-level discussion point into the issues facing women in technology. Reynolds’ documentary is breezy and engaging, complete with slickly assembled infographics as well as talking heads from women that work for Dreamworks, Facebook, Twitter & other youth-friendly brands. It should make for a decently entertaining part of a middle school’s assembly programming.

25 years after “The Reset” left most of the world without power, Max (Ian Christopher Noel) receives a mysterious hard drive from a friend who recently committed suicide. Max is a hacker who lives on the fringes of the rebuilt society in Sector 6; however, when he’s unable to hack his friend’s hard drive, Max must recruit the law-abiding computer technician Simon (Josh Caras) to help him uncover nefarious hidden truths. Together in Jackrabbit, set for its World Premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, Simon and Max seek the answers to a dead friend’s riddle while under the watchful eye of a mysterious, new world government.

First-time feature filmmaker Carleton Ranney establishes a retrofuturistic look to his film that blends modern technological advancements with DOS interfaces, VHS tapes, and bulky monitors. Both aesthetically and in its narrative, Jackrabbit raises a series of unanswered questions that make the story increasingly intriguing when it begins to unfold. Unfortunately, when the movie attempts to reveal its intentions, Jackrabbit becomes a nonsensical and tedious look at life in a surveillance state.

Scene after scene delivers sparing details as the characters interact slowly, and deliberately articulate as little as possible. The technique wouldn’t grow so tiresome if these scenes contained any tonal variety (the same can be said for Noel and Caras’ one-note performances). Max and Simon discover a minor clue about the hard drive left to them by their dead friend, only to follow that clue to another small clue in an endless investigation into nothing. There are vague allusions to an overreaching, corporate-run government and a group of rebels outside the city’s walls, but Jackrabbit leaves its enemies and the protagonists’ obstacles ambiguous enough to render them boring.

Jackrabbit moves through its story at such a lethargic pace it may lull you to sleep, desperately waiting for a third act revelation. Individual details are compellingly weird, but it would take the most attentive of audience members to parse meaning from many seemingly pointless actions. Despite its potential, and the film’s impressive production design, Jackrabbit is irritatingly dull and ends with a shrug.

James Franco, ever the prolific actor, is easy to find on multiple screens at once fairly often. It’s especially interesting, however, to have just watched him in the memoir-adapted, true crime focused True Story when his most recent vehicle is also based on a memoir, also about a writer, and also involves a high-profile murder case. Whereas he is the suspected murderer in True Story, in Stephen Elliott’s adapted memoir The Adderall Diaries, Franco wears the writer’s shoes. The writer being Elliott, who, deep in a state of writer’s block, takes an interest in the public trial of an accused wife-murderer.

Pamela Romanowsky’s directorial debut has a few of the same old drug-fueled and frenzied elements one comes to expect in melt-down films. The cinematography of Bruce Thierry Cheung maxed out in color, angled sideways, and sometimes slowed down in a pretty, if not unexpected, way. The music of Michael Andrews fits well, pulsing when called for, though maybe not especially stirring at times.

Franco’s Elliott is propelled through life, and his writing career, by a zealous hatred and capitalization on his abusive relationship with his father. The reserves of his grudge-holding run deep. Thus far it’s proven lucrative for him, as his first auto-biographical novel is doing well and he’s gotten an advance from a publisher for his next. Except he can’t seem to write it. He sees the trial of Hans Reiser (Christian Slater) on television and, much to the dismay of his editor (Cynthia Nixon), decides to attempt an entirely different sort of novel. This will be his In Cold Blood, he claims.

At the trial he meets Lana (Amber Heard) and, with one look at his motorcycle, the two begin a relationship steeped in their mutual brokenness, hers involving an abusive step-father. It’s of course when Elliott’s life seems most together that things must coming crashing down. At a reading of his first book, wherein he’s depicted the death of his mother to cancer at an early age and the chain-reaction this had on his relationship with his father and his relationship with drugs, Elliott’s father Neil (Ed Harris) makes an appearance. Bad news is a key part of Elliott’s memoir revolves around the supposed death of his mentally abusive father. When Neil shows up, publicly decrying the lies present in Elliott’s memoir, his entire reputation and career are at stake.

The film’s source material is all about the inaccuracy of memory, the way we select and remember out of context in order to suit our feelings on our pasts. Romanowsky depicts this theme in multiple flashbacks, sometimes tweaking them to be slightly different, to add more context, as Elliott progresses. Elliott’s words also appear on the screen as he types, letting us in on his personal way of mis-remembering. Elliott as the unreliable narrator of his own life is interesting, sure, but, well, unreliable. By his own admittance. It’s hard to hope for his redemption when he doesn’t just push people away, he selfishly tries to drag them down into his dark pity party.

Franco and Harris are on point, while Slater is severely underused, his plot line of very little interest. And, I admit, there’s a certain amount of guilt one has in finding fault with a real person’s attempt to share their own difficult narrative, but somehow blaming mis-remembrance as an excuse for self-destructive behavior reeks of falsity. You can’t play the martyr if the cause never existed. Romanowsky never wins audience trust, and her film gets distracted by the lesser fleshed-out true crime story, something I’m assuming Elliott does better in his book. Added all up, The Adderall Diaries confuses itself somewhat when laying out all its many themes, and despite Franco’s masochistic charm, his protagonist remains lacking in finding his way toward empathy.

Indian Point, making its World Premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, gets its name from the Indian Point nuclear power plant that resides less than 40 miles north of New York City. The documentary from Ivy Meeropol takes a comprehensive look at the tenuous situation surrounding the future of the nuclear reactors in relation to the over 20 million Americans that live near the plant. While the problems regarding the implementation of nuclear power are far-reaching, Meeropol’s documentary takes a focused look at the situation in Buchanan, New York, as she follows several residents whose everyday lives concern Indian Point.

As the film begins, Indian Point looks as if it’s attempting to document the lives of the people who work at the power plant. Meeropol showcases the daily routine of Indian Point’s control room supervisor, as well as a couple other plant employees, who vouch for the safety of their plant. To a nuclear plant worker, it’s about risks versus perceived risk, and the risks appear minimal from the inside. The film’s scope then widens when it introduces Roger Witherspoon, an environmental journalist who has covered Indian Point for decades.

His wife, a local environmental activist named Marilyn Elle, is another prominent figure in the film. Like her husband, Marilyn attends any public hearing on Indian Point; however the couple insists on arriving separately so as to maintain professional integrity. Marilyn rails against the company and the Nuclear Regulatory Committee while Roger sits back, reporting. The interviews with Witherspoon and Elle provide the majority of Indian Point’s case against the continued existence of nuclear facilities, mining their years of immersion with the issues for a deep understanding of each side’s talking points.

Between Indian Point’s employees and the combination of Roger and Marilyn, the majority of the documentary’s interviews come from residents of the Buchanan area that have spent decades steeped in the debate over the nuclear site’s future. Condensing years of disputes makes parts of Indian Point feel like a bit of a general overview, which can be frustrating when an interviewee mentions structural damage as if were just in passing. Gradually, Indian Point’s seemingly even-handed approach fades, as informational screens warn of the immense dangers that nuclear power plants pose.

After Indian Point profiles a series of locals, the documentary turns its attention to the bureaucratic logjam disrupting progress on handling nuclear facilities throughout the country. In the wake of 2011’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the United States’ attention turned to its nuclear power plants, but none more threaten to harm a larger population than Indian Point. Former NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko plays a pivotal role in the documentary’s latter part; however, his interview appearance is surprisingly brief. During his chairmanship, Jaczko pushed for rapid changes to US nuclear policy before getting pushed out of his job. For Indian Point, he’s a particularly authoritative figure on the subject, and it might have been beneficial to get more of his insight. The documentary keeps its focus on Indian Point, the company that owns the facility, and the people most directly impacted by the nuclear site.

Indian Point outlines a lot of frightening aspects of real danger, but at points the approach feels like a bullet point summary of relevant topics. Several shocking revelations about Indian Point’s safety concerns are glanced over without a descriptive explanation of the problem. However, Meeropol includes such a litany of reasons against the continued use of nuclear reactors in Buchanan that her documentary becomes deeply chilling. Indian Point offers limited bits of information on many disconcerting facets to the Indian Point nuclear plant, creating a persuasive argument for greater scrutiny in our approach to nuclear.

The dispute over how to properly contend with terrorism skews toward ideological talking points in favor of a discussion about the people involved with terror. While terror is a global issue whose ramifications can be far-reaching, the actions taken by a terrorist are motivated by specific situational causes. Among the Believers ventures to personify those most directly affected by terror, speaking with Pakistanis who are both for and against extremist causes. From the hotbed of terror in Islamabad, the filmmakers of this new documentary gained unprecedented access inside infamous The Red Mosque, home to chief cleric and sharia law advocate Maulana Aziz, a fervent supporter of jihadist warfare. The chilling movie, making its World Premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, is a shocking examination of the extremist movement in Pakistan.

Among the Believers hones in on the volatile situation in Pakistan by profiling a series of individuals that have differing relationships to Islamic terrorism. Most notable is Al-Qaeda supporter Maulana Aziz, who is shown leading the Red Mosque congregations in anti-Western chanting as well as literally pocketing money that’s been donated to the mosque. Aziz’s role isn’t simply to inspire violence and hatred among his followers; he’s also a prominent religious figure and thus a community leader. A young child stands in his office reciting jihadist rhetoric, then turns to Aziz looking for confirmation. When an elderly man approaches for charity, Aziz pulls from his pocketed stash of cash in order to help. These moments help to illustrate how a man capable of disgusting evils can endear himself to the public.

Many of the supporters for The Red Mosque become indoctrinated by the most extremist views of Islam in Pakistan’s madrassas. These seminaries offer to host, feed, and educate Pakistani children in the Quran for free, as opposed to Pakistan’s school that require children to live at home and parents to pay for the costs. As a result, the amount of madrassas across Pakistan has grown from 3,500 to 40,000 since launch of the Afghan war. While the madrassas plays an integral role in allowing Pakistani parents to give their children healthy lives, Among the Believers shows how many times these parents are unaware of the lengths to which their children are exploited.

In the madrassas, children spend all day memorizing the Quran. “We don’t know the verse’s meanings, we only memorize them,” says Talha, a young boy interviewed for Among the Believers. Like most children in the madrassas, Talha comes from a poor, rural area and had parents who were moderate Muslims looking for a good place for their child. By the time Talha’s father wants to remove him from the madrassa, Talha refuses, stating that if his father is wrong he won’t listen to his father’s orders.

The danger is documenting such unsettling material is slipping into fear-mongering territory, but Among the Believers steers clear of damning Pakistan or Islam as a whole. Sections with the 12-year-old Zarina, a young girl who escaped her madrassa in order to return home, demonstrate that even Pakistani youth can sometimes recognize the faults in the jihadist mentality. Amongst the other featured interviewees is nuclear physicist and education activist Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy, who speaks out elegantly against extremism. During a particularly representative scene, Maulana Aziz and Hoodbhoy argue in a TV interview over the justification for recent acts of terrorism. Their ardent commitment to opposing sides of the debate underlines the inevitability of more conflict. Both sides feel deeply wounded and are unwilling to wave a white flag.

Among the Believers highlights the saddening, cyclical nature of the issues surrounding religious extremism, not just in Pakistan, but around the world. One problem feeds the next, and no one fix will alleviate years of mutual damage. Though it’s possible to find hope in Pakistanis continued pushback against the jihadist fervor bred by the Red Mosque and Maulana Aziz, the overriding realization is that these conflicts often reach an unbreakable impasse. Among the Believers exhibits the fraught situations that can cultivate an extremist ideology.

If suicide is a nonsensical act, leaving all in its wake confused and reeling, then Bridgend just might be its cinematic equivalent. Harsh, violent, and often lacking in reason, the film is a frustrating portrayal of fake people in a very real and very intriguing situation.

Based on real events and a real problem in the constantly wet and dreary Welsh county of Bridgend, where as of right now almost 80 teenagers have committed suicide since 2007. Which, rightly so, has induced rather a frenzy as adults scramble to figure out what’s happening with the youth of that area. First time director Jeppe Rønde’s film is set in this area, at an ambiguous point in the epidemic, but it is mentioned in the film the death count is around 23. The story is from the perspective of Sara (Game of Thrones’ Hannah Murray), who moves back to the Bridgend area with her father, Dave (Steven Waddington), after years away.  Dave, a cop, has come to lead the investigation on the suicide problem. It seems a bit naïve of Dave not to worry about putting his teenage daughter into the middle of a teenage-suicide-centric town, but their bond is tight and at first she keeps herself distracted from the locals by her horseback riding and generally cheery attitude.

But she is after all a teenager, and when a local girl, Laurel, invites her to hang with the main group of teens in the small town, Sara can’t help herself. This group, led by the shaved-headed Thomas, like to hang out by a lake in the nearby woods. Often stripping down and jumping in, drinking beer and building bonfires. Typical rebellious teenage stuff and Sara is entranced by this tight-knit group. When they head back to town, they stop at the spot where the latest suicide took place, in their version of paying respect to their dead friend, they stop to howl the name of the deceased teen at the top of their lungs. Clearly these teens find more satisfaction in uniting and celebrating their friends’ deaths more than grieving or asking questions. Sara gets her first taste that this group may not be as typical as she thought. Hearing that Thomas, who had shown an interest in her, has committed suicide only a few days later—literally the day after Sara came on to him—feels like it ought to strike more fear into Sara’s heart, but strangely just seems to bring her closer to the other teens.

Throughout the film, the teens communicate in an online community. A chat group where they mourn the growing loss of their friends, while simultaneously extolling that each is in another place. That they are “together.” None of these teens seem especially concerned that their friends are dying. Sara, herself, doesn’t ask nearly enough questions of her new friends until much too late in the film. And her father, the cop, seems hell-bent on being insensitive and unhelpful in the investigation.

While it’s difficult to draw too many conclusions about a real-life case that is currently still open, the picture painted by Jeppe Rønde is one of a strange resignation. In the film the parents of these children, while distraught, don’t seem to be trying all that hard to understand what’s happening to their children. Nor does anyone try to keep a closer eye on the teens still living. The total lack of clear-thinking and logical interrogation is rather frustrating. Rønde chose to focus on the characters of the film rather than try to suggest possible answers for a real problem, but unfortunately the characters all feel two-dimensional.

Sara and her father, while close at first, quickly spiral when he starts seeing a local woman, who isn’t present enough to be a real character. And Sara is so utterly transfixed by Jamie (Josh O’Connor, giving the best performance of any of them), the new leader of the group after Thomas’s death, and the others that it’s hard to see her as the “strong” person others in the film keep claiming she is. The few parents who do pop up, also seem motivated and blinded to reality in an inexplicable way.

All of this could have played into the film if Rønde had offered up some sort of suggestion for what exactly is influencing them all. Supernatural? Old-fashioned bad parenting? It’s quite hard to tell what we’re supposed to think. The film builds, somewhat jarringly, to a dramatic climax. The film’s deafening and uncomfortable music pulsing in a way that makes the confusion of what is happening on screen that much more annoying. If we’re supposed to be frightened, Rønde could have at least given us a hint at what we’re supposed to be frightened of.

Much of the imagery used, the teens floating naked in the dirty lake for instance, feels distinctly horror-ish, but it’s hard to feel any real sense of dread. This may be due to the true-story aspects of the film and the very real mystery they present. For a film that couldn’t provide any real answers, it doesn’t seem to want to try to provide any real guesses. The lack of questions make it a puzzling and disturbing film that feels off-putting because it’s using a real and tragic scenario. The phenomena of cluster suicide is a strange and mystifying one, but it is a psychological phenomena and therefore should have been treated with a bit more mindful consideration.

Traditional sake brewing in Japan dates back over 2000 years, but as manufacturing grows and sake sales decline there are fewer Japanese brewing companies that make sake through the traditional means. One such brewery still implementing the painstakingly arduous process of fermenting rice into alcohol is the Tedorigawa brewery in the Hokuriku region of northwest Japan. The sake company has been operating for nearly 150 years, and when it’s passed to the next heir in 2020, he will become the 6th member of his family to run the brewery. At Tedorigawa, a brewmaster guides his team of nearly twenty men through a procedure of steaming, kneading, and preparing rice over the course of 6 months. Documentarian Erik Shirai follows the group of sake brewers at Tedorigawa for a full year as they live together and craft old-fashioned Japanese sake in his new documentary The Birth of Saké, which has its World Premiere at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Shirai develops an atmospheric feel to his film, primarily utilizing natural sound and the conversations between employees at Tedorigawa. The talking head sections are given less emphasis than real moments of collaboration that unfold during the brewing process. Shirai’s camera lingers on detailed close-ups of hands as they press the rice, or the puffs of steam that envelop various workers. Some of the director’s previous work was with The Travel Channel’s No Reservations, which makes sense given the enticing way he shoots rice in this documentary. The sporadic use of slow-motion in conjunction with the continuous, waving arm movements of the Tedorigawa staff gives The Birth of Saké a contemplative, meditative quality that’s occasionally entrancing. The method is so repetitive, and the workers’ routine has become so exact that the challenging process becomes oddly alluring.

That said, The Birth of Saké outlines the many difficulties that face Tedorigawa and its staff. To brew the sake, workers must spend 6 months away from their families, living at the brewer and rising for breakfast at 4:30 in the morning, only to work through dinner at night. The climate is frigid, and the employees spend so much time massaging rice that their hands lose feeling. Many who work at Tedorigawa have to seek employment elsewhere for the remaining months of the year, and these harsh conditions have made it increasingly difficult for the brewery to recruit new hires. Many who work for Tedorigawa are approaching retirement age. Others leave when they find the work too grueling. These and financial obstacles work to threaten the future of traditionally brewed Japanese sake.

The documentary interweaves the group’s work at the brewery with the “off-season” lives of certain employees, including the company’s impending heir Yasuyuki Yoshida. Yasuyuki spends the remaining 6 months of his year traveling the world to sell the Tedorigawa sake, pitching or taste testing with restaurants in Japan and abroad. As sake consumption decreases in Japan, many Japanese sake brewers have accommodated by offering lighter and sweeter varieties of the drink. Bucking trends, Tedorigawa has continued to brew their bolder, more distinctively flavored sake with the hope of appealing to traditionalists. For Yasuyuki, this harsher taste yields mixed results for sales.

Other tangents focus more closely on the limited time the Tedorigawa staff gets to spend with family. Erik Shirai largely plays interview audio through voiceover and therefore maximizes his natural footage. These segments provide a fuller portrait of the lives of sake brewers; however, they’re sparse on detail and not as riveting as the sections featuring the brewery.

There’s artistry in seeing the aging brewmaster at Tedorigawa meticulously monitor his brews’ temperatures in order to keep them regulated. The artisanal procedure is presented elegantly, and there’s a calming aspect to The Birth of Saké. Though the movie is slow in parts, Erik Shirai’s debut documentary feature is an entertaining glimpse into an ancient technique as its practice begins to die away. The Birth of Saké is a hypnotizing ode to Japan’s primary alcoholic export.

For most, last summer’s Ice Bucket Challenge was the first they’d much stopped to consider the disease ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). Since then two Hollywood films have come out highlighting the disease, The Theory of Everything and the Hilary Swank led You’re Not You. The first focusing more on the spouse taking care of a husband (slash genius) with ALS, the second a poorly received drama where the disease is sideswiped by character development. Instagram-ed videos of ice water baths aside, true insight into the day-to-day of living with ALS  isn’t a subject featured all that often in film. A documentary about ALS is the perfect vehicle for that insight, and one made by a madly artistic force of nature—Patrick O’Brien aka TransFatty, who thought to tape his every step in his personal journey with the disease—ends up being a brilliantly honest, creative, and moving spotlight—not on the disease, but on people with the disease.

Directed, written by, and all about Patrick, the film is of course deeply personal, even more so in that Patrick, who no longer has use of his limbs or the ability to speak, uses this completely unconventional documentary to express himself in a way that allows us into his head, the only place where he’s truly active anymore. And it’s a wacky, scary, hilarious, and moving place. Those familiar with TransFatty’s work previous to the documentary, as an Internet sensation and DJ, may be used to his mid-90’s MTV-style. Erratic coloring, home video footage of strange set-ups. Patrick wearing three prosthetic breasts. Buildings being blown up. All edited together with footage Patrick has been shooting since before he was even diagnosed. As a filmmaker it makes sense he’d be drawn to capturing life on camera, but the extent to which he has been thoughtful to record the events in his life is staggering. Not to mention that he convinced his friends and family to take up the camera when he wasn’t able to hold it himself any longer.

The documentary starts around when Patrick started to notice his first symptoms. A quick look at the work he did after film school. The short films he made and his electronic music as DJ TransFatty. Then a video of himself, walking through his apartment, falling in his hallway and knowing a few records off his shelf on the way. Then a scared admission on camera that he finds out the next day whether or not he has what many consider to be the most debilitating disease humans have yet to be subjected to. At the doctor’s office, still recording of course, he tells the doctor his legs have been shaking. He’s been falling down. Not soon after, he films the official diagnosis: he has ALS. His family sits around him in shock as Patrick plasters a scared smile on his face. He’s a man quick to smile in any situation, a part of himself that has not yet seem to have gone away.

Every stage of Patrick’s disease is caught on film. He and his family go to Puerto Rico where they have to help him walk. They work out his limbs for him on the bed as he makes crude jokes. He floats in the pool, still joking about his situation, about the unknown future. His speech has gotten a little bit slower. Patrick holds nothing back. He shows every high and low of his experience with ALS. The fun times, like when he camped out in front of the White House naked with a statistic written on his stomach to make a point about how many people are taken by ALS every hour. The times where his friends roll him about, American flag flowing off the back of his wheelchair. For a wheelchair-bound man with almost no use of much of his body, he clearly stayed incredibly busy. Busy enough, even, to fall in love and have a son.

Throughout the film O’Brien “speaks” directly to his son, the robot that has replaced his voice expressing in a supine but ironically comical voice, some of the many thoughts he has. His gift as a writer is clear. His sense of humor ever-present. And his pain on not being the father he wants to be utterly heart-wrenching. Patrick O’Brien is never manipulative. Never appears to be looking for sympathy. He’s doing what many artists claim as their driving force: fulfilling an innate need to express oneself. Capturing his life, capturing his essence, is the motivation of the film. And with such a colorful essence, his life translates to film in the most perfect way.

It’s so hard not to constantly question the fairness of life when a person of such acute mental sharpness and artistic genius would be shackled by a disease that threatens to take away most of their humanity. I wouldn’t dare comment on O’Brien’s ability to make the most of his situation. He’s made better use of his body and brain than most full-functioning humans, and it’s not because he’s been attacked by ALS, it’s because he’s an artist and a film director and he has thoughts worth sharing. Watching him change because of ALS is difficult, but the parts that will tear your heart out are the hardships O’Brien faces as a normal human man. Hardships of love, of fatherhood, of artistic struggle, and basic human needs. And that’s where he’s done what other films around ALS have not, reminded us that no one should ever be defined by the things they can’t control, but by what they choose to express and put into the world, circumstances be damned.

We’re less than a week away from the start of the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival and the lineup of films, speakers, and events (not to mention a fun assortment of jurors) has us excited to usher in Spring in the city. With just over 100 films playing at the festival, picking and choosing what to see is one heck of an undertaking, not to mention the speakers—Stephen Colbert with George Lucas, Brad Bird with Janeane Garofalo, Bennet Miller with Christopher Nolan, and so many more—and the special events—Back to the Future 30th Anniversary screening, Goodfellas 25th Anniversary screening, Monty Python and the Holy Grail 40th Anniversary special screening (as well as many of the other Monty Python films)—there’s more to be done than can possibly be done in a week and a half.

In anticipation for this exciting New York jubilee, we’ve honed in on the films playing at Tribeca that we’re most excited to see. Stay tuned for all of our Tribeca 2015 coverage, and keep an eye out for these hotly anticipated films.

Grandma

As a feminist poet reeling from a break-up and still mourning the loss of her long time partner, Elle Reid (Lily Tomlin) is forced to sideline her misery when her teenage granddaughter (Julia Garner) shows up needing $600 and a ride. In an effort to round up the money, the two have to hit the road, running into people from Elle’s life and discovering more about each other. Based on his track record alone, it’s not hard to be excited for the latest from Paul Weitz (About a Boy, Mozart in the Jungle). His best work stems from the dynamics of stubborn former-successfuls forced to interact with younger polar opposite-types, hilarity and lessons picked up along the way. After its highly lauded debut at Sundance this year, Weitz is being praised for doing what he does best, but in a particularly indie, low-budget sort of way. That he cast Lily Tomlin (whose impeccable comedic acumen has been restricted mostly to television of late and is so seriously deserving of big screen attention) to helm, only proves Weitz is maturing from his American Pie days and I, for one, can’t wait to see the results. [Ananda]

Meadowland

Cinematographer-turned-director Reed Morano (Winter’s Tale, The Skeleton Twins) makes her feature debut in this drama following a pair of parents struggling to cope in the aftermath of their son’s disappearance. In Meadowland, Sarah (Olivia Wilde) struggles to maintain her job as a teacher, while her husband Phil (Luke Wilson) develops a disconnect from his responsibilities as a city cop. Olivia Wilde has developed into an unofficial ambassador for the Tribeca Film Festival, producing several films (including shorts) that have debut in New York; however, often these movies provide Wilde with an intricate role to play. Her willingness to stretch herself as an actress is exciting, and here she’s paired with one of the many female directors making their debut during the festival. Meadowland’s wide-ranging supporting cast includes Giovanni Ribisi, Elisabeth Moss, John Leguizamo, Juno Temple, and Scott Mescudi, and the combination of elements makes this contemplative drama an intriguing prospect for the Tribeca Film Festival. [Zach]

Bleeding Heart

A sophomore effort from director Diane Bell (Obselidia), Bleeding Heart (not remotely to be confused with Bleeding Hearts, the low-budget Dustin Diamond horror vehicle also wheedling its way into the world this year) is the tale of two sisters. One, May, a yoga instructor (Jessica Biel) living a clean and orderly life with her boyfriend, the other, Shiva, a street-smart chaotic sometime-street worker (Zosia Mamet) in need of saving. When May takes in Shiva and attempts to put her life into some sort of order, it’s Shiva who ends up pulling May into her own disarray. Bell has described the actual core of her story as centering around violence, specifically violence against women. The questions she hopes to bring up about violence being an answer to violence are intriguing, and the message is one always worth exploring. [Ananda]

Slow West

Slow West left the Sundance Film Festival with the Grand Jury Prize for the World Cinema Dramatic competition, as well as smatterings of praise from the critics in attendance. Described as a Western set at the end of the 19^th century, Slow West’s plot description (17-year-old travels from Scotland to Colorado to reunite with the woman whom he loves) and even its title (it’s not Exciting West) seemed to suggest a sleepy, thoughtful brand of frontiersmen cinema. Then came the recent of the trailer to Slow West, packed with horse-riding, gun-totting, fur-coat-wearing characters set against expansive blue skies and empty fields. If Michael Fassbender spouting dialog through the cigar held firmly in his mouth while “Come Alive” blares in the background isn’t enough to get you excited for Slow West, not much else will. But how about one more shot of Ben Mendelsohn in his fur coat from Sundance? [Zach]

Tumbledown

After being a part of last year’s unfortunate Johnny Depp flop, Transcendence, it’s good to see Rebecca Hall getting a lighter and more central role. In Tumbledown she plays a widower of a famous musician beginning work on his biography and spurred into action when a New York academic (Jason Sudeikis) makes it known he too wants to write a book on his life, and his version may look very different. The two end up collaborating, digging into her deceased husband’s life and coming to clearer understandings of what it means to live and love. Directed by first-timer Sean Mewshaw, the film boasts an impressive cast including Dianna Agron and Blythe Danner, but mostly looks like the perfect romantic comedy to relieve some of the tension by some of the more serious festival drama fare. [Ananda]

Aloft

Having only really seen its first stirring teaser trailer, full of poetic imagery and no dialogue, a lot of my interest in seeing Aloft is based on pure intrigue. But the talent loaded behind it makes for real promise as well. Tribeca’s description of the film sums it up best: “The tales of a mother and son are told in parallel and woven together in a way that demonstrates the subjectivity and fragility of time. Single-mother Nana (Jennifer Connelly) has a mysterious experience at the hands of a traveling healer. Years later, her troubled son Ivan (Cillian Murphy) sets out to search for his now absent mother. The film blends past with present against the backdrop of a frozen world.” The film also features Mélanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds), an actress I’d watch do almost anything. Peruvian director Clauda Llosa first impressed with The Milk of Sorrow, nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2010. The emotional and visual tantalization of Aloft implies this may be one we all go home talking about. [Ananda]

Slow Learners

Don Argott & Sheena M. Joyce have collaborated on several strong documentaries (Last Days Here and The Art of the Steal are both on Netflix Instant) but are set to make their fictional feature debut this year with the World Premiere of Slow Learners at Tribeca. Adam Pally (Happy Endings, The Mindy Project) and Sarah Burns (Enlightened, Married) star as platonic friends who decide to shed their vanilla personalities for more confident alter egos in a summer filled with crazy, drunken nights.  Beyond the underrated comedic talents of Pally & Burns, Slow Learners’ cast features funny supporting performers like Saturday Night Live’s Bobby Moynihan, The Office’s Kate Flannery, and Veep’s Reid Scott. Tribeca typically features a couple standout, low-key humanistic comedies, and with the talent attached, hopefully Slow Learners will be among this year’s most entertaining. [Zach]

Thought Crimes

The story of the NYPD’s “Cannibal Cop” dominated headlines when Gilberto Valle was accused of plotting to kidnap, rape, kill, cook, and eat up to 100 women. Valle had utilized police databases to conduct surveillance on women that he fantasized about brutalizing, and although Valle alleged got close enough to stalk a couple of his potential victims, he never carried out the long list of heinous acts associated with his name. For obvious reasons, this scandal permanently affected Gilberto Valle’s life; however, first-time feature documentarian Erin Lee Carr endeavors to take a closer look at the case while asking a fundamental question: can you be guilty of a crime you only thought of committing? With unique access to Valle and his family, Carr’s documentary Thought Crimes promises to examine the evolving role of the criminal justice system as the digital world becomes an increasingly vital part of everyday life. [Zach]

For the full guide to films playing at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, check here. 

With regular host Bernard taking some time off to smell what The Rock is cooking (attending WrestleMania 31), C.J., Ananda and Zach take over the Indiecast to talk about the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival. Ananda and Zach talk about the films they can’t wait to check out at the festival, and Ananda reveals one of her biggest film sins! After talking about Tribeca, the topic turns to outrage, with a discussion on some recent films that have gotten criticisms for their offensive content. And this week we have three new Indie Picks to recommend: one in theatres, one on VOD, and one you can stream right now on Netflix! All this and more on the Way Too Indiecast!

Topics

• Indie Picks of the Week (2:10)
• What We Like About Tribeca (11:25)
• Anticipated Tribeca Films (18:11)
• Outrageously Offensive! (31:36)

WTI Articles Referenced in the Podcast

Spring review

White God review

Get Hard review

Cinderella review

Gone Girl review

Best 50 TV Shows of the Decade So Far

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With a mere two and a half weeks left between now and the start of the Tribeca Film Festival, movies are beginning to build anticipation before their premieres. Among the slew of documentaries playing at Tribeca 2015 is the intriguing story of Ryan Ferguson, a man sentenced to 40 years for a brutal murder, based in part on another man’s dreams of the crime. dream/killer tells the story of Ryan’s father Bill Ferguson working to grant his son freedom for a crime he didn’t commit.

Directed by Andrew Jenks (Andrew Jenks Room 335, It’s Not Over), dream/killer promises to examine faults in the American judicial system while weaving together a heartfelt documentary about broken families left with unsatisfying answers. dream/killer premieres on Sunday, April 19th as part of the Tribeca Film Festival’s Viewpoints section. Additional screenings of dream/killer run on April 19th, 20th, 24th & 25th.

Watch the unsettling trailer for dream/killer below: