One-on-One Q&A: Ry Russo-Young, Writer/Director, "You Wont Miss Me"

One-on-One Q&A with Ry Russo-Young,
Writer-Director, You Wont Miss Me
Interview by Erin Scherer

Ry Russo-Young's latest film, You Wont Miss Me, premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. The film stars Stella Schnabel, who collaborated with Russo-Young on the story. You Wont Miss Me follows Shelly Brown, a 23 year old recently released from a mental institution. The film was shot using a variety of mediums, including 16mm, Super 8, Mini DV, and High Definition, in order to, to quote Russo-Young, "speak to our entire visual existence today".

Russo-Young's previous feature, Orphans, won a Special Jury Award in the Narrative Feature Competition at the 2007 South By Southwest Film Festival. Orphans is now available on DVD alongside Russo-Young's 2005 short, Marion on Carnivalesque Films. You Wont Miss Me will also be playing at this year's SXSW, with its first screening Friday, March 13th at 9:30pm the Alamo Lamar Theater, Theater 2.

The following interview took place as a phone conversation on the morning of February 23, 2009, the day after the Oscars. Erin's method of recording the conversation was pretty dubious, holding a shotgun mic to a speakerphone, but she did the best she could.

Erin: Having done a lot of searches of you on Google, it sounds like you have been involved with the arts from a pretty early age. What were your first forays into the arts? Did you take dance lessons? Theater? Describe some of your earliest artistic endeavors.

Ry: When I was a little kid, I was really into imaginary things, playing pretend with outfits and kind of imagining an alternate world.  So when I got into acting when I was an early teenager, like 12 or 13, it was very similar to the imaginary things--only now there was a word for it, it was called acting.  Then I got into photography when I was in high school.  I've always been interested in the arts, it just felt natural to me.

When I got into photography, I was shooting photographs of narratives, and when I discovered film, it made a lot of sense.  All of my loves kind of came together.

Erin: Looking at your website, I noticed you made your first movie in 16mm before you were even out of high school. How did that come about? Was it sort of an independent study, a senior thesis, or was it just something you did on your own in the off hours?

Ry: Actually, my high school had a filmmaking course, where you could shoot on 16mm, and so I did that in my high school filmmaking class. I don't know if they still have it, but it was part of a class I took in school.

Erin: On top of making movies, you've done mixed media and performance art as well. Can you explain some of the projects you've done, and what they are about?

Ry: I have this project called "Peep Show" that's a series of short films shot on Super 8. Each one is a collaboration with a specific idea. Each person does some kind of sexual show. They design the show with me, and then they perform it. Then it will be installed in a gallery as a bunch of tiny holes in the wall that you look through, and you see all these little shows that are sort of like the older peep shows. It's like a projection of people's sexual fantasies through the lens of a camera.

That's one project I've done. Another project is called "The Middle Ground", where I align my family history with "Little Red Riding Hood", and I try to combine them. It was a show that had a lot of video on it, and audience participation, and it was about growing up, leaving your family, falling in love, understanding relationship dynamics, and how fairy tales inform how you see romantic relationships.

Erin: In Marion, you re-enact Psycho on three seperate screens. How did that idea come about, and why did you decide to re-enact Psycho?

Ry: I was watching Psycho at the time, and was really into it, and I've always been really into Hitchcock. I just kind of got the idea while watching it. I was studying it the way a student of film would study it, look at how people are doing things, and I was doing that with Psycho. I was especially fascinated with the lead character, the way she was sort of a female archetype, and the way [Hitchcock] has characters killed so early on in the film, and the controversy surrounding that. I was watching Psycho and just got the idea.

Erin: You wrote Orphans in the year after you graduated from college. Did you think that you would likely be shooting it yourself?

Ry: Yeah. When I wrote it, I wrote it to be made. I definitely though I was going to be the one to...well, not necessarily shoot it myself, be behind the camera (I had a DP), but I knew that I was going to make it for no money, and probably shoot it within the same year. It was written to be made.

Erin: But it took a little while longer to shoot it.

Ry:There wasn't that much of a gap between writing and shooting.

Erin: How did you decide to shoot it in Jeffersonville? Did you go location scouting, was it a house you kind of knew about, or did you happen about it one day?

Ry: What happened was that I was working at a vintage clothing store at the time. I'd gone up to the boss' house--the boss had a house up in Jeffersonville and I had gone to her house for the weekend. It was kind of a magical house in the summer. We had a pool, we were swimming, and and we just had an amazing time up there. I found the house really, really inspiring. There was something about the location, and at the same time, that's when I was writing Orphans. I think I subconciously, without even realizing it, started imagning it being set in that house the whole time while writing it. After I finished it, I sort of realized: that is the house. And so then I went up and scouted the house and the location, as well as a few other houses, and ended up shooting in that house.

 

Lily Wheelwright and James Katharine Flynn in Orphans.

Erin: One of the stars of Orphans, Lily Wheelwright, died just days after the movie's premiere at South By Southwest in 2007. What was your relationship with her prior to Orphans? I know you attended the same school together. Were you close friends, or mutual acquaintances?

Ry: In high school, she was someone I knew. She was friends with people I was sort of friends with. We were different ages. I knew a lot of people that knew her.

The around the time I was making Orphans, I actually asked my high school drama teacher to name the ten best actresses that came out of my high school that were within the age range of what I was looking for, and she named Lily's younger sister, Josephine. So I auditioned Josephine, and I thought that she was too funny, and the character kind of has a more innate sadness about her. She said to me, "Well, my sister's acting these days. You should audition her." And I auditioned Lily, and I thought that Lily was perfect for the part. She had the quality that I was looking for.

Erin: How did you come to cast James Katharine Flynn? I know you worked with her in Marion. Did you write the role of Sonia with her in mind?

Ry:After writing Orphans and making Marion, I knew I wanted to work with James Katharine Flynn, particularly because she was so good in Marion. I didn't write the part for her, though.

Stella Schnabel in You Wont Miss Me

Erin: The casting of someone with a legacy might usually be to attract funding for a film, but you and Stella basically grew up together.

Ry: Lola [Schnabel, Stella's sister] was my childhood best friend, and Stella was her younger sister...another weird younger sister. Shortly after Orphans, Stella told me she was acting. I'd never worked with Stella before. I knew her, but she was a different age than me, so she wasn't like my childhood best friend. I thought she would be interesting on camera. I just felt, "Let me run a test and see what I can do with her." We got together, and made a character of Shelly Brown. I interviewed the character for about five hours on video, with my cinematographer shooting. What happened was that I went home with the footage, edited the interview down, and started writing the script, the story, based on the original interview.

Erin: I haven't seen the movie yet, but Karina Longworth, in her review, had this to say about the movie:

Writer/director Russo-Young and co-writer/star Stella Schnabel remind us how rare it is to see a film about the inner life of a beautiful, troubled young lady without the objectifying filter of the male gaze, without the beauty and the trouble fusing into a fantasy cipher of a postmodern damsel in distress.

A trend in recent, more mainstream independent films have had this character that's almost become a stock character: this sort of adorable, quirky girl that captures the heart of the male protagonist. Natalie Portman's character in Garden State is the most notorious example I could think of. Did you have that type of character in the back of your head when you were putting this together?

Ry:Once you'll see it, you'll definitely understand that this character is far from those quirky kind of indie-type girls. In some ways, it's actually an antidote to that character.

Erin: That's what I meant, actually.

Erin: Why did you choose to shoot this on multiple formats?

Ry: I chose multiple formats because I felt that it would be the best way to capture this character, and the way you're looking at this character from all these different angles, and all these different situations. It gives a more generous portrait, who she really is and what she's about. I wanted to show the diversity in different ways of looking, and the formats are part of that. One minute, she's being the sweetest person in the world, and the next, when she's being cruel to someone. It's about the way you see those things, and how the emotional temperature of the scene is carried through the actual texture of the medium it's shot on. Does that make sense?

Erin: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense--

Ry: It also changes your way of looking. Like if you're looking through a magnifying glass, looking at something straight, and if you're looking at it over the hill, it changes the way you're seeing things.

Ry Russo-Young (left) with Greta Gerwig in Hannah Takes the Stairs

Erin: How did you get cast in Hannah Takes The Stairs?

Ry: I met Joe on the festival circuit, at the Chicago International Film Festival when I was there with my short, Marion. Basically, we kept in touch, and then he asked me if I wanted to do it.

Erin: What was it like working with Joe?

Ry: It was good! It was a lot of fun!

Erin: What filmmakers have inspired you in the past? You mentioned Hitchcock a little bit earlier.

Ry: That's a really hard question to answer, because it really depends what I'm working on at the moment. It all sort of depends on what I'm interested in making, and what I'm watching. For example, when I was making Orphans, I was watching a lot of Bergman. Bergman definitely inspired me. And I guess for You Wont Miss Me, I was watching more--actually, you know, I don't know what exactly inspired me. I think it was more documentaries in general, a general cultural moment in the time we are living in, with everything like the implication of YouTube and reality television to the banal.

Erin: Are you working on anything else right now?

Ry: Yeah, I'm in the early stages of a new movie.

Erin: Are you willing to share some details, or would you rather wait until later?

Ry: I'd rather wait until it's more developed.

indieWIRE's "An Evening with Generation DIY" (Swanberg, Gerwig, Katz and Hillis) @ Apple Store SoHo – Thursday, August 23, 2007

DIY filmmaker Sujewa Ekanayake (Date Number One), who was in town from DC, and I headed over to the Apple Store in Soho Thursday night where we met up with A.M. Peters (NO Cross, NO Crown) for indieWIRE’s “An Evening with Generation DIY.” After the panel discussion, we met up with iW and other film bloggers at Botanica. The indieWIRE posse was there along with filmmakers Craig Zobel (whose film Great World of Sound is being released by Magnolia Pictures on Sept. 14 in NYC – See my notes from GWOS Q&A at BAM from back in June), Doug Block (51 Birch Street), Arin Crumley (Four Eyed Monsters), Michael Tully (Silver Jew), The Reeler’s S.T. VanAirsdale, Basil Tsiokis (NewFest artistic director), Agnes Varnum (Doc it Out), Pamela Cohn (Still in Motion), Matt Dentler, and this list goes on.

indieWIRE's "An Evening with Generation DIY" (Swanberg, Gerwig, Katz and Hillis) @ Apple Store SoHo – Thursday, August 23, 2007

Panelists:
Joe Swanberg (JS) – Director / Writer / Producer /Cinematographer /Editor, Hannah Takes the Stairs
Aaron Hillis (AH) – Director/Cinematographer/Co-producer, Fish Kill Flea
Aaron Katz (AK) – Director/Writer/Editor – Quiet City
Greta Gerwig (GG) – Hannah/Writer, Hannah Takes the Stairs
Matt Dentler (MD) - South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival Producer

Moderator:
Eugene Hernandez (EH)– Editor-in-Chief, indieWIRE

EH- “The New Talkies: Generation DIY” series at IFC Center brought us together tonight. Matt Dentler programmed a lot of these films at SXSW, which played a role in facilitating a place for these filmmakers to come together. How does this relate to DIY and Mumblecore?

MD- The term Mumblecore came from an indieWIRE interview with Andrew Bujalski (Mutual Appreciation). It’s a frustrating label. Seems limiting by creating a brand where a brand doesn’t need to be, but it has opened up doors to the filmmakers. The New York Times published an article about Mumblecore. People are starting to wonder what this movement is. Mumblecore represents excitement and enthusiasm about new films, but is not used too often, because it’s limiting. The films are bound by like-minded sensibilities. So far, they’re all good films.

EH- A lot of these films hadn’t played theatrically until recently. What’s the state for emerging filmmakers?

MD- Festival programmers are disenfranchised by what the media considers indie films. Mumblecore films open up a dialogue. SXSW took a stance to not program Sundance leftovers. I didn’t know any of these people before we selected their films.

[Clip screened from Hannah Takes the Stairs]

EH- What was the process of making this film?

JS- I had clear idea about the scenes, and we had time to try different things.

GG- There was no script. It was all improvised. You shouldn’t do anything in front of Joe or he’ll find a way to work it in the movie.

EH- What challenges are there to this process?

JS- Hannah is different from my other films, because they started from a script. Hannah was just a two-page outline so the actors could figure out who their characters were. The finished film was different than the movie we expected it to be. It’s a process of discovering the movie as you go along. I like to be excited and not know what’s going to happen. I edited the film each day after shooting. At the end of the day, we had finished scenes.

EH- How exciting was it for you Greta?

GG- I never acted in a film before (except for voicemail scene in LOL). I didn’t have any pre-conceived notions. It was a process of figuring out where the movie was going and finding out who Hannah was. All of Hannah’s boyfriends end up relating to the scar on her foot. It became a theme. We discovered it, liked it, and repeated it.

EH- You’ve had three years of features playing at SXSW. How do you feel your view of your process of filmmaking has changed?

JS- I started out more experimental. The shooting style hasn’t changed that much. I acted all of my previous films, but not in Hannah. The projects I’m acting in I tend to shoot more. Moving forward, I’m interested in telling more stories. My first film (Kissing on the Mouth) was more of a process of showing it to audiences at festivals. Audiences responded to the more narrative aspects.

[Clip screened from LOL]

EH- What is your connection to LOL?

AH- Partners with Andrew Grant on the DVD distribution label (Benten Films) with Ryko Distribution. We saw so many films flying under the radar. Our first title, LOL, comes out next Tuesday. I also co-directed the documentary Fish Kill Flea about a rag tag flea market in Upstate New York. It’s not a Mumblecore movie, but is DIY.

EH- What do you think as a blogger your take on DIY films represents?

AH- Have no lofty generalizations. Mumblecore tries to pigeonhole these films. I think it’s neat that we’ve come to a place without budgetary gatekeepers. It’s exciting these films are getting attention.

MD- There was a DV revolution in the late 1990s where you could shoot everything on DV, but didn’t have access to the editing equipment we have today. One of my favorite films is Tarnation.

[Clip screened from Fish Kill Flea]

EH- How did the idea for IFC’s “The New Talkies: Generation DIY” come about?

AK- IFC Center was going to screen my film Quiet City, then IFC First Take acquired Hannah Takes the Stairs. We talked about other films like Andrew Bujalksi’s Mutual Appreciation and the Duplass Bros.’ The Puffy Chair.

EH- What do you think ties these films together to be grouped as a series?

AK- Aesthetic qualities, shot on DV, except for Mutual Appreciation, which is shot on film. All films are different from one another, but attempt to explore the world around us in a truthful way with day-to-day life.

EH- How did your film Dance Party USA come about?

AK- I went to school in North Carolina and talked about what to do after school. Figured out a $3,000 budget I saved from working. Shot the film in Portland, Oregon.

MD- After viewing the screener DVD, I contacted Aaron right away. It’s really important to have your contact info on the DVD.

[Clip screened from Quiet City]

Audience Q&A

Q: In your (Joe’s) films, there seems to be a certain level of intimacy during certain scenes. How many people are on the set while shooting these scenes?

JS- There were four people including cast and crew on Kissing on the Mouth. I don’t like anyone to be there who doesn’t need to be there, so there are no distractions.

AK- On Quiet City, there was a five-person crew. Relatively small. Everyone is comfortable with each other.

AH- Three people on the crew of Fish Kill Flea.

Q: In Anthony Kaufman’s indieWIRE blog, he posted an entry regarding commercial distribution of films will be these types of films downfall. How do you feel about that?

JS- This is true for all movies in general. The best experience is having no expectations walking into a film. Commercial expectations change all the time. The film community is starting to look a lot like the music industry.

AK- I’d like people to be able to see my movies.

EH- As a performer, what kind of pressure does that create?

GG- It gives more people the opportunity to see me naked. I don’t really see a downside to it. I’m writing more things and acting in more films. It’s more pressure to be reviewed. Kind of scary.

AK- My next film is set in the 1970s, so it will require more money to make. It’s a positive thing to continue making the films I want to make.

Q: What are your next film projects?

JS- Nights & Weekends starring Greta about a long distance relationship. The web series Butterknife.

AH- Short film sometime in October to turn into a feature documentary about the decline of train culture in America.

AK- A 70s piece.

GG- The Duplas movie, Baghead. It screws with genres. They don’t want me to say too much about it.

Hannah Take the Stairs Q&A with Joe Swanberg and cast at IFC Center – Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Wednesday night, I met up with DIY filmmaker Sujewa Ekanayake (Date Number One), who came in from DC, and documentary filmmaker Liz Nord (Jericho’s Echo: Punk Rock in the Holy Land) where we saw the premier of Joe Swanberg’s new film Hannah Takes the Stairs at the IFC Center in New York. The film has a week-long run there, and is part of the series, The New Talkies: Generation DIY, or as some people have been terming it, Mumblecore. This weekend, I’ll post my notes from indieWIRE's "An Evening with Generation DIY" (Swanberg, Gerwig, Katz and Hillis) @ Apple Store SoHo.

Hannah Take the Stairs Q&A with Joe Swanberg and cast at IFC Center – Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Joe Swanberg (JS) - Director
Greta Gerwig (GG) - Hannah
Kent Osborne - Matt
Todd Rohal – Brian Duges

Prior to the screening, Joe mentioned that he and Kevin Bewersdorf were the only crew and that they shot Hannah on HD with a Panasonic HVX-200 camera over a period of one month. It was entirely improvised.

After the screening, the audience asked questions to Joe and cast.

Q: Were the relationships between the characters planned out in advance?
JS: We used a guideline. We edited the scenes each day after shooting them, and the cast watched it and talked about it and where it would go next.

Q: How did you get your cast?
JS: I met Mark Duplass and Andrew Bujalski in 2005 at SXSW where my first film Kissing on the Mouth premiered. Andrew was skeptical he’d be able to work on Hannah, but he freed up 10 days to do it. His film, Mutual Appreciation, came out about the same time we started shooting.

Q: Why didn’t you act in Hannah?
JS: I was nervous because this was the first time I had a real budget with someone else’s money. I wanted to focus on being behind the camera.

Q: Did you plan the dialogue in advance?
JS: For example, the scene where Hannah and Matt are playing with the magnets, we woke up that day, had breakfast, and talked about what conversations they’d have such as politics. Shot the scene in one take. Nothing was really planned out. At that point in the movie, we had very little idea what the movie would be. Shot the movie out of order, going back and forth and filling in the gaps. There was about 24 hours total footage shot for the 83-minute film.

GG: I had an idea of what I wanted to do for example in another scene with me (Hannah), Rocco (Ry Russo-Young) and Matt drinking beer, I had the idea of pushing Rocco toward Matt to get jealous. Ry got upset and wondered what I was doing.

Q: Did the original vision for the story change during production?

GG- The original idea was about three relationships happening simultaneously, but we decided to tell the story in a linear fashion. There was no way to know what was going to happen. My character changed based on how her relationships changed. Three different guys fulfilled different aspects on what she was looking for.

Q: When did you realize shooting was over?

JS- We expected to shoot more, but this was the first time I edited while shooting, so everything stayed on schedule.

GG- There was a list of what we needed in the house, ie. Bread, milk, script.

Q: Why is the film titled Hannah Takes the Stairs?

JS- On a practical level, I pitched the movie as a drawing on photoshop with three guys and a girl, and artistically, it’s about being driven and ambitious.