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Screenplay & Film Consulting By Susan Kouguell

Susan’s Interview with ‘South of Hope Street’ Writer and Director Jane Spencer for Script Magazine

September 2023

Writer and director Jane Spencer, an expat American independent filmmaker based in Zurich, Switzerland, talks about her four features and her decades-long career.

Fresh off her award as a filmmaker from Producers Without Borders at the Venice Film Festival 2023 for ‘Auteur and Poetic Filmmaking’, I spoke with writer and director Jane Spencer, an expat American independent filmmaker based in Zurich, Switzerland, about her four features and her decades-long career.

Jane Spencer receiving Producers Without Borders Award at the Venice Film Festival 2023. Photo courtesy Jane Spencer.
Jane Spencer receiving Producers Without Borders Award at the Venice Film Festival 2023. Photo courtesy Jane Spencer.

KOUGUELL: Congratulations on your recent award at the Venice Film Festival.

SPENCER: It was quite a surprise and a great honor.

KOUGUELL: You are a fiercely independent filmmaker who made a conscious decision to not work in the studio system.

SPENCER: My pieces are so personal; it’s very hard for me to work for the studios. I tend to be a loner as to ideas and what I want to make. I am moved by European cinema, which tends to be auteur cinema, including Wim Wenders and Agnes Varda, as well as American filmmakers like Tom DiCello and Alison Anders who came up in the 1990s.

KOUGUELL: You studied in the United States, including the Actors Studio Playwrights/Directors Unit in New York City and film at New York University. How did these experiences influence you?

SPENCER: At the Actors Studio I was inspired by the legendary directors Elia Kazan, Arthur Penn and Joe Mankiewicz, among others. I remember Kazan saying that writers should direct their own movies and I took that to heart. When I was at NYU, Spike Lee suggested we shoot a three-minute teaser and to make it look as good as we can; that’s how he made his first movie. 

Jane Spencer. Courtesy Jane Spencer.
Jane Spencer. Courtesy Jane Spencer.

So, I wrote Little Noises, which took one year. I worked with writer Anthony Brito, who came up with the idea, and Jon Zeiderman and I wrote it. I took the project to producer Sandra Schulberg who liked the teaser and script, and thanks to her, got it to Henry Jaglom who had formed his women’s film company. Henry got the film off the ground and gave it to producers who raised the financing.

KOUGUELL: Little Noises premiered in 1991 at Sundance and was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize. The making of this film was quite a journey for you.

SPENCER: I consider Little Noises the boot camp for everything that could happen – happened. It was a difficult time; I didn’t have much power on the film and the producers chopped up my movie. I am grateful to them for raising the finance and trusting me to shoot it, but unfortunately they were also new producers and they mishandled the film totally, and did not look after it and still don’t. I am currently trying to get it back so that it can have a new life after the abysmal thing they pulled at Sundance; my film was accepted to Sundance on my rough cut. They recut several ‘key’ sections of it without my permission, which – in my opinion and many others’ opinions – harmed the screening. I did get it back and I recut it properly and we got some very good reviews and a theatrical release based on my new cut, which was based on my original rough cut. I continue to be so proud of Little Noises; both Crispin Glover and Steven Schub gave brilliant performances.

After that experience I became a producer on all my movies. As a director, at least in the American system, once you option your work, you give up your copyright, unless you’re a Scorsese, and even then, they can cut it, put in different music, and so on.

KOUGUELL: You also write and direct your own plays.

SPENCER: I worked in theater in England, Los Angeles and New York to recover from my first film, and then worked with theater producer Steven Adams, who now works with Spike Lee. I decided to take one of my plays, Faces on Mars, a dark comedy about a bunch of actors living in one room in Silver Lake and adapted it to a screenplay. It premiered at the Solothurn Film Festival in Switzerland.

KOUGUELL: In 2014, your next feature The Ninth Cloud premiered at the Raindance Film Festival in London. Let’s talk about that process.

The Ninth Cloud

A dark, existential comedy about a young woman trying to find answers to the meaning of existence. In London she runs into a pack of strange characters, from bohemian struggling artistes to monied British aristocrats with all their varying agendas, as she tries to help an impoverished immigrant child with a leg problem.

Behind the scenes shooting with Michael Madsen on The Ninth Cloud. Photo courtesy Jane Spencer.
Behind the scenes shooting with Michael Madsen on The Ninth Cloud. Photo courtesy Jane Spencer.

SPENCER: This experience taught me how to produce movies. First I shot a trailer for the film, and from that raised the financing independently and did the casting, and so on – it took about four years. After Raindance, the film went on to the Shanghai International Film Festival (CN), La Femme Film Festival (Los Angeles), and the Glasgow Film Festival in Scotland. The film garnered great reviews and was released in April 2018 in Europe and the UK and can be seen on iTunes and Amazon Prime in the USA and UK.

KOUGUELL: You have your own production company in Zurich.

SPENCER: Mostly I work through my own company Ward9 Productions, with my partner Marc Holthuizen. Once in a while, I will work on other people’s scripts. Right now I’m working with Robbie Wolliver and his wife Marilyn Wolliver on Robbie’s award-winning play Folk City, which I’m very excited about.

KOUGUELL: Let’s talk about your fourth feature, your new film South of Hope Streetwhich you described as a fable-like story about contemporary times.

South of Hope Street

In 2038 earth reaches a cosmic tipping point and enters a mysterious universe. To perpetuate the old order, people hide behind a gigantic wall and engage in wars. In this dystopian wonderland, Denise (Tanna Frederick) walks on thin ice to believe in her future, spurred on by Tom (Judd Nelson), a caretaker, who promises that a renaissance is on its way. Also starring William Baldwin, Jack McEvoy, Patricia Sluka, Meredith Ostrom, Pascal Ulli, Angelo Boffa, Asser Yassin, Gianin Loffler, Barry O’Rourke and Michael Madsen as Benjamin Flowers.

Behind the scenes shot of the shoot in the Swiss Alps, with all of the crew, Jane Spencer in chair and Judd Nelson about to shoot a scene.
Behind the scenes shot of the shoot in the Swiss Alps, with all of the crew, Jane Spencer in chair and Judd Nelson about to shoot a scene.

KOUGUELL: Similar to some of your previous projects, this began as a short film.

SPENCER: Yes, the short starred Tanna Frederick and Hilmir Snaer Gudnason of 101 Reykjavik. We shot the feature in Switzerland in Zurich and in the Swiss Alps of Maloja, near St. Moritz. We all stayed at the giant empty hotel The Maloja Palace; and the actors recalled that it was like The Shining. (Jane laughs). The cast and crew were wonderful.

KOUGUELL: You mentioned that you needed a 1960s soundtrack because there is a time traveler in your script. Perseverance paid off; you didn’t let your low budget stop you.

SPENCER: First, we went to some big name artists like Mick Jagger but we were blocked by the record companies who wanted more than we could afford. A producer friend then approached Donovan’s music publisher, showed them clips of the film where we wanted music, and they liked the clips and gave us a deal. Donovan was very kind.

KOUGUELL: South of Hope Street was recently picked up for distribution.

SPENCER: Buffalo8 Films is our U.S. distributor. We are planning on a Los Angeles premiere but we are waiting for the strikes to be over.

KOUGUELL: Tell me about the projects you currently have in development.

SPENCER: The Red Weather is being produced with FilmsInTuscany and The Velvet Gentleman, the story of the eccentric French composer Erik Satie, who will be played by the great French actor Jean-Hugues Anglade

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Susan’s Interview with with Internationally Acclaimed Director Alice Troughton on her Debut Film ‘The Lesson’

I’ve always looked to explore genre where the female gaze has been historically excluded: Science fiction, horror, Westerns, and now film noir with this gift of a savage and subversive script capped with a dynamic female-driven twist. 

Alice Troughton

In a wide-ranging discussion, I spoke with internationally acclaimed director Alice Troughton about her film The Lesson, which had its premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival. Troughton led, directed, and executive-produced Baghdad Central (2020) for C4, Troughton is also known for her work on the award-winning shows The Living and the DeadCucumberTin Star, A Discovery of Witches, and Doctor Who. In 2022 Troughton completed work on The Midwich Cuckoos for Sky.

About The Lesson: Liam, an aspiring and ambitious young writer, eagerly accepts a tutoring position at the family estate of his idol, renowned author J.M. Sinclair. But soon, Liam realizes that he is ensnared in a web of family secrets, resentment, and retribution. Sinclair, his wife Hélène, and their son Bertie all guard a dark past, one that threatens Liam’s future as well as their own.

[L-R] Richard E. Grant as J.M. Sinclair, Daryl McCormack as Liam Sommers, Julie Delpy as Hélène Sinclair, and Stephen McMillan as Bertie Sinclair in Bleecker Street's  THE LESSON. Photo by Anna Patarakina, Courtesy of Bleecker Street.
[L-R] Richard E. Grant as J.M. Sinclair, Daryl McCormack as Liam Sommers, Julie Delpy as Hélène Sinclair, and Stephen McMillan as Bertie Sinclair in Bleecker Street’s THE LESSON. Photo by Anna Patarakina, Courtesy of Bleecker Street.

KOUGUELL: You worked closely with producer Camille Gatin and screenwriter Alex MacKeith, as you stated, “to mine the dark corners and sultriness of the script which felt full of urgent questions: What do we do with art of monstrous men? How culpable are all parties involved in coercive control? Can we reclaim the film’s narrative from the traditional patriarchal noir archetypes? How does anyone navigate and survive the British class system?”

TROUGHTON: We didn’t want to be didactic. I’m not at all afraid of going on a polemic, but I think it’s necessary sometimes. I also think there’s always a way of catching flies with honey, making sure that the second-class status of women in the industry and in the whole world – and that includes women and women-identifying – that there is an inclusive feminism of mine; there’s nothing more important in my filmmaking than that.

KOUGUELL: This is the first feature film that you directed. Let’s talk about the transition from television to film.

TROUGHTON: First of all, I was very lucky as it was my first film experience. We all had toxic jobs and this wasn’t one. I feel that I was picked in turn by producers who wanted my vision. It all came from a show that I directed that won huge amounts of awards called Cucumber, which was by Russel T Davies, one of our finest writers.

There’s an affinity between my gaze and his; it’s just not the female gaze. We collaborated a lot of times; he’s the showrunner on Doctor Who. That experience allowed me to be free in my filmmaking, which is what my producers gave me on The Lesson. Obviously, Alex wrote this page-turner of a script. A lot of it is semi-autobiographical so it came from the heart. He’s also a complete wordsmith; his writing has his own style of acerbic wit and he’s a stand-up comic.

KOUGUELL: The Lesson is a contemporary noir that challenges the traditional definition of this genre.

TROUGHTON: We tried to subvert those norms. I think you can watch the film and have no idea about the noir archetypes. I wanted it to be just that fantastic Witness for the Prosecution rapport that you enjoy at the end of a good thriller. There’s also a meta-level of it, which you’re also subverting the traditional noir roles. If you are a noir fan and a noir filmmaker – there’s the femme fatale, the detective, the monster – those strong archetypes. We wanted to have fun with that.

KOUGUELL: Hélène’s character arc is quite an engaging slow burn.

TROUGHTON: Hélène is kind of mute. She’s not only mute around the dinner table, she’s mute in the way that the femme fatales were mute. She’s the object of desire; she’s identified through the gaze of other people, which is something obviously you’re getting into the semiotics of the gaze, something that is very noir identifying.

There is a really key and subtle moment, which is the moment that she breaks the gaze from being objectified, to returning Liam’s gaze and she looks straight at him. It is the moment that you realize that Hélène’s role is changing and that leads you to the moment to the end. She in fact is the detective. She isn’t the femme fatale. She’s playing the detective role and that always has been her role from the start.

[L-R] Julie Delpy as Hélène Sinclair and Daryl McCormack as Liam Sommers in Bleecker Street's THE LESSON. Photo by Gordon Timpen, Courtesy of Bleecker Street.
[L-R] Julie Delpy as Hélène Sinclair and Daryl McCormack as Liam Sommers in Bleecker Street’s THE LESSON. Photo by Gordon Timpen, Courtesy of Bleecker Street.

KOUGUELL: Tell me about the shoot.

TROUGHTON: We had 22 days of shooting. It was a low budget. We needed efficiency. There was such a sense of play on that floor and joy, we all were exactly where we wanted to be to do that. There was extraordinary chemistry.

KOUGUELL: The music by Isobel Waller-Bridge was incredible and added an important layer of conflict that was referenced in the narrative.

TROUGHTON: I had heard her work on Emma and Fleabag, and when I met her we platonically fell in love. She was with the project from the very start, it was five years from the inception to the film getting made. What she’s done in the film is astonishing, it’s hugely dramatic and at the same time very subtle. The music is gorgeous and gives the film a vivacity. We were talking a lot about Russian composers like Rachmaninov, Borodin, and Tchaikovsky; they have circus and pomp and ceremony. They were great as influences.

KOUGUELL: There are other influences as well. You looked at the history of artist couples —Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst, Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes – in which the male spouses and their notorious egos, garnered attention.

TROUGHTON: We looked at objectification, sexual politics, and the denigration of women in the arts to redress that balance.

KOUGUELL: The objectification of women on screen brings to mind Nina Menkes’s documentary Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power. The character of Hélène is watching the men and she was the one in power; she has agency.

TROUGHTON: Yes, and Hélène breaks that gaze. I watched Menkes’s film after I made The Lesson. In Brainwashed, Menkes quotes Agnes Varda: “The first feminist gesture is to say: “OK, they’re looking at me. But I’m looking at them.” The act of deciding to look, of deciding that the world is not defined by how people see me, but how I see them.”

Courtesy Bleecker Street.
Courtesy Bleecker Street.

There’s a point when we break the gaze of objectification. It is scored, but it is not scored as a big moment; it’s scored when Hélène returns the gaze, and that changes her from being objectified into the person who is doing the looking. Varda’s “I will look back at you” – that is exactly what Hélène is doing. That made me very happy when I heard that quote afterwards. It is about Hélène going: I can change the view, I can reclaim the gaze.

KOUGUELL: The theme of redemption is at the heart of The Lesson.

TROUGHTON: For me as a filmmaker, it is a particular interest of mine. I believe in redemption and I believe in a redemptive ending, and in an Aristotelian way of saying that drama is inspirational and cathartic and that you can also be inspired by redemptive endings. I like an ending with morality.

Susan’s Interview with ‘The Graduates’ Filmmaker Hannah Peterson at the Tribeca Festival

Hannah Peterson generously offers insights into the development of her project from the writing and interview process to the remarkable changes that occurred in the editing room.
Mina Sundwall in THE GRADUATES. Photo credit Carolina Costa.
Mina Sundwall in THE GRADUATES. Photo credit Carolina Costa.

During the Tribeca Festival I spoke to Hannah Peterson, the writer, director and editor of her debut fiction feature The Graduates. Peterson generously offered insights into the development of her project from the writing and interview process to the remarkable changes that occurred in the editing room. Our in-depth conversation also tackled the tough subject of the aftermath of gun violence, and the decision not to portray violence on screen.

“While I was writing, I experienced a sudden personal loss when my younger brother died of gun suicide. The grief that I experienced through that loss, and the coming together of my family and community around it, became imbued into the fabric of the story and informed several of the choices I made in the edit.” – Hannah Peterson

Named one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine, Hannah Peterson’s work has screened at Sundance Film Festival, MoMA, REDCAT, Tribeca Film Festival, and Slamdance Film Festival where she was awarded the AGBO fellowship for her short film, East of the River. She holds an MFA in Film Directing from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and a BA in Screen Studies from the New School. Prior to her work as a director, Hannah mentored under filmmakers Sean Baker and Chloé Zhao.

About The Graduates: A year after her boyfriend dies from gun violence, a young woman prepares to graduate high school as she navigates an uncertain future alongside a community that is searching for ways to heal.

KOUGUELL: From the inception of the script to the final cut, you were in a unique position as the writer, director, and editor, to convey the story you wanted to tell. This is an auteur film in the best sense of the definition. Tell me about the process.

PETERSON: When I set out to make The Graduates, I was interested in telling a contemporary story, a coming-of-age story in the American public school system. I set about interviewing high schoolers and recent graduates, and asked about their experiences, their fears, and the highs and lows of high school.

This is something I explored in my short films prior and wanted to explore in a feature. Nearly everyone I spoke to mentioned their anxiety about safety in their school and that on any given day something could happen. I was very struck by that. I couldn’t tell a contemporary story without touching upon that throughline. I wanted to explore what it was like when the cameras left and the resources left, and how it was really a community left to navigate the circumstances.

Director Hannah Peterson. Photo by Nadia Sarwar.
Director Hannah Peterson. Photo by Nadia Sarwar.

In terms of the script, I was writing it as a vehicle for me to direct. I always see the script as a more malleable instrument. There were scenes that I knew I wanted to cast real people in or cast locally. For instance, the grief circle and the basketball team. I knew in advance before we went into production I wanted those to be real people, actual high schoolers, sharing their actual stories, their actual hopes and dreams. I was leaving space for those moments to be happening organically, and the rest to be scripted.

In the process of production things obviously changed as they do. As you mentioned, to be the editor, I had a new and added perspective. I certainly did a lot of rewriting in the edit of the film. The script was originally structured in chapters, Chapter 1 was Genevieve, Chapter 2 was Ben, and Chapter 3 was Jon. It worked so well on paper and I had great responses to the script and we shot it that way, but it wasn’t until the editing room – it might be a testament to the performances all being so powerful – but I knew we had to be with all these characters from the start to finish of the film. Of course, this required some pulling from Act 3 to Act 1, and reordering a lot of things and that was really an activity of discovery. I really found the film when I made that decision to do that.

KOUGUELL: You just mentioned about the interviews you had with actual high schoolers. Please elaborate about that process.

PETERSON: I was lucky to learn about writing and directing from Chloé Zhao and Sean Baker. Both of them spend a lot of time on locations where they will be filming and speaking with individuals who are living the experience of the characters. That creates a fluidity between the screenwriting process and the casting and location processes; that was something that was influential in all my work.

On this feature, I set up as a writer to be a listener. The students who I interviewed were just any students who were willing to speak to me. I actually saw a photojournalism article in the New York Times called “Inside Santa Monica High”. There were these candid photos taken by Nico Young, who was a junior at the time. I was so moved by the photographs. I reached out to Nico and asked him to meet the subjects of his photographs. In my interviews, I asked students what high school is like. The students shared their journal entries and told me private moments in their lives, and through those conversations, I got to hear about their anxieties and about safety in their schools. That became the most substantive part of these conversations.

KOUGUELL: There is no antagonist, except for the gunman who remains unnamed and unseen on screen. This was a powerful choice not to give attention to him, which is often the case in the media.

PETERSON: I think the first and easiest choice I made was not to show the act of violence itself. This created a lot of creative challenges because you’re basically skipping over the inciting incident of all these people’s lives. When you’re talking about trauma and grief, they’re not actually linear experiences and when you’re in that situation, the world is antagonistic. You don’t necessarily need massive conflict in every scene because your life is conflicted. I really decided to trust in that and in the characters and situate the plot around these private moments of grieving rather than on traditional plot points or inciting incidents.

KOUGUELL: You mentioned this feeling of agency that your main characters had, and how they are on that journey to find that. There were also moments of levity that were important and not only drove the narrative forward, it made the drama that much more impactful and moving.

PETERSON: It’s always really important when talking about things as heavy as death, grief, and trauma, to lever that with moments of levity. When you’re spending time with young people it’s inevitable because people don’t always talk about what they’re feeling all the time. A lot of it is underneath; a lot of it is mundane, just natural levity in the way young people express themselves, especially in the privacy of each other’s company that I wanted to make sure was part of the fabric of this film.

KOUGUELL: You allowed the characters to breathe in the film and spend time with them, not cutting away from them too quickly. This is such a difficult subject matter and I imagine with the whole process of treading that fine line, questioning: is it too much, is it too little? How did you find that balance?

PETERSON: I cared so much about the characters and cared about the actors. Each character was emblematic of a multitude of conversations I had along the way about survivors with high schoolers and with youth. It was so important for me to be able to do those people justice and to honor them.

When I was editing it, thinking about the frame and the camera, I wanted it to feel like I was there with the characters and I didn’t want to leave them until they were ready to be alone. It drives the rhythm of the script. In the moment that a character could be strong for a minute, we can go to someone else, and when that person needs someone to be there we can go there as audience members.

KOUGUELL: The film concludes on a hopeful note without feeling contrived or tied up in a neat bow.

PETERSON: I’m really glad you got that. I wanted people to take from the film the conversations I had with survivors during the writing process. Throughout the conversations I was moved by the sense of agency and urgency and altruism and that while this generation was rooted in grief, I found it really hopeful. In the film there are no grand gestures; there is a subtle rebuilding of a sense of self that really comes when each character starts to turn towards each other. For me, there is so much hope in that.

I hope that this film provides a safe space for people to process feelings about gun violence in our country that can exist outside of the reactive cycle of the news media and to connect with one another, because I believe that connection and conversation can be the precursors for action. 

Susan’s Script Magazine Interview: ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ Writer and Executive Producer Lesley Paterson On Adaptation, Collaboration and Perseverance

Lesley Paterson, along with her co-writers Ian Stokell and director Edward Berger are nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best International Feature Film. She is also an executive producer of the film.

Many writers and filmmakers often say that getting a movie made is like running a marathon. For screenwriter and producer, Lesley Paterson, this hits close to home; she is a world-champion triathlete.

Lesley and I spoke two weeks after All Quiet on the Western Front swept the BAFTA awards, winning seven, including best film, director and adapted screenplay — more than any other non-English-language film in BAFTA history – and less than two weeks before the Oscars. Lesley, along with her co-writers Ian Stokell and director Edward Berger are nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best International Feature Film. She is also an executive producer of the film.

This is the first time Erich Maria Remarque’s antiwar classic novel has been adapted for the screen in its original German. The story follows teenager Paul Bäumer as he enters the army as an enthusiastic recruit and quickly becomes disillusioned by the horrors of the brutal, futile fighting he encounters. Soldiers such as he are expendable pawns to officers safe from the battlefield and who demand the fighting continue even as armistice is only hours away.

Felix Kammerer as Paul Bäumer in All Quiet on the Western Front. Courtesy Netflix/Photo by Reiner Bajo.
Felix Kammerer as Paul Bäumer in All Quiet on the Western Front. Courtesy Netflix/Photo by Reiner Bajo.

KOUGUELL: You and Ian Stokell first optioned the book in 2006. I understand that you used your race winnings to keep the project afloat over the years, even mortgaging your house at one point to hold onto the rights.

PATERSON: Yes. It ended up being 16 years and two months until we premiered it.

KOUGUELL: The book has been adapted twice prior into movies. Why did you feel the need to do another adaptation?

PATERSON: I read the novel when I was in school. For me, it was the dramatic essence of the betrayal of the youthful generation and it hit a chord. Being from Scotland and that underdog mentality, fighting against the upper brass. I connected to that. When I read it again in 2006, I had gone through an undergraduate in drama, and then a master’s degree in theater and film, and I met Ian at that point, and we were doing various pieces together and we directed some scripts. We were in a bookstore together when we saw the novel on sale and we looked at each other, and thought, there’s not been a film made for several years. (Ian was in the British Army in the 1970s, including a deployment in Northern Ireland and the military, his grandfather fought in the war.)

Lesley Paterson
Lesley Paterson

After reading the novel, we had some ideas about how we would want to do it and then we went about to see if anyone had the rights. We’re kind of mavericks in that regard, and you’ll gather that by my athletic career, we thought we’re on the outside, but let’s have it a go. Lo and behold, no one had the rights. It was shocking. Normally studios or producers had rights, and we pitched them and we were lucky enough that they said yes, and my husband and I scrounged together enough money to pay for the option rights.

For us we felt that we could bring something new to this story; it was the historical context because they didn’t delve into that in previous films, which were more direct translations of the novel. We thought it was fascinating because it was not something we learned in our history, especially coming from the winning side, and so we thought we had something different to offer, and then we embarked on adapting it.

KOUGUELL: How did your adaptation process begin?

PATERSON: We bought multiple copies of the novel and delved into it. We tore it apart, put different scenes on the wall, dug into the thematic essence of what the author was trying to say – that was our guiding light. We did a lot of research all around WWI, from the German side, the French side and British side – the whole landscape of the war, that formed basically how we did the adaptation. Then of course we did multiple drafts, there were completely different stories.

We created a dramatic throughline that could carry the narrative with some urgency that the novel does not have because the novel is almost like excerpts of a diary.

KOUGUELL: You mentioned that rather than a literal translation of the book, it’s an emotional translation. Please expand upon that.

PATERSON: When you look at a novel it’s very difficult to see how you can make it cinematic for an audience. We had to drill down into it, looking at the key elements and thematic premises of the book. For Ed, myself, and Ian, it was telling it from the German perspective, and having that sensibility; there are no heroes, war is not an adventure. We wanted the audience to feel that total devastation, feel the arc of that patriotic fervor to the numbness and animalistic tendencies at the end.

KOUGUELL: How did your collaboration process evolve?

PATERSON: When we first optioned the novel it would have been nearly impossible to get this project off the ground because you could not raise the financing for foreign language films. That’s why we initially decided to do it in English with German accents. Furthermore, WWI was not a hot topic to cover; it was not an American war. Cinema was very much about America back then. As the landscape changed, streamers came in, local language was much more regarded, such as Parasite won best picture and foreign film.

Luckily we held on to the option long enough that eventually producer Malte Grunert got the script and he was doing a project with Ed Berger. And they both said, this needs to be told in the German language. We loved Ed’s vision and we thought it was brilliant. We knew this was the right path, given we just spent 14 years with various producers, directors, and money on and money off.

We did a couple of passes on the script together and then Ed, and rightly so, said I need to do my own pass on the script and I need to infuse it with that German sensibility. That was a wonderful learning curve for us as writers; I think Ian and I brought the outside in perspective which gave it that historical context and something unique. But then Ed came on, and gave it that inside-out perspective; the way Germans talk, the way they interact, that sense of shame, and their culture about previous wars.

Ed did his pass on the script in English, then gave it to us, and we had some collaboration on that, and that was translated into German. Because Ed is a co-writer and director, it was somewhat seamless. We are also executive producers on the project, and you put your producer’s hat on and say, if you trust in this director, let him do what they need to do to bring it to the screen.

[Filmmaker Chloé Zhao and Producer Spears Talk Adapting “Nomadland” to the Screen at the New York Film Festival]

KOUGUELL: It’s certainly a timely film given all that is happening today.

PATERSON: It’s as relevant today as it was then. As the years rolled on, interestingly, that’s what makes this novel so powerful is the essence of it; the everyman, the betrayal of a youthful generation, the destruction of war, the senseless killings.

KOUGUELL: What tips do you have for writers working on adaptations?

PATERSON: If you are adapting on a basic level, first make sure you have the rights and a good lawyer with the right contacts. Second, read it multiple times, get the essence of it. Adaptation doesn’t mean it needs to be a lesser translation, it’s not a documentary. View it through your own lens and your own experience. Be streamlined with what you want to say; if you say too many things it becomes about nothing. Finding that throughline and finding your angle is really your key.

Continue to go back to the novel. It’s also important to put it down and go back to it. Another key is research, this will spawn more ideas. Don’t do research just for a historical piece there are so many things that can spawn ideas.

KOUGUELL: What has this experience of bringing this film to life brought to you?

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PATERSON: It’s given me confidence to follow my dreams and to never give up when people are saying no. You must keep going and stay true to your why; Why is this story important for you to tell? If you can drill down on that, then it’s going to give you the passion to keep going.

All Quiet on the Western Front is now streaming on Netflix.

Susan’s Interview with Trailblazing Filmmaker Nina Menkes About Her New Documentary ‘Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power’

Filmmaker Nina Menkes discusses her thought-provoking and illuminating documentary ‘Brainwashed: Sex- Camera-Power,’ which explores the sexual politics of cinematic shot design, showing how this visual language of cinema connects to both severe employment discrimination against women – especially in the film industry – as well as to the epidemic of sexual harassment and abuse that was exposed through the #MeToo movement.

Still from Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power. Photo courtesy BrainwashedMovie LLC.
Still from Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power. Photo courtesy BrainwashedMovie LLC.

Considered a cinematic feminist pioneer and one of America’s foremost independent filmmakers, Nina Menkes has shown widely in major international film festivals and museums. Honors include a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, an AFI Independent Filmmaker Award, a Creative Capital Award and an International Critics Award (FIPRESCI Prize).Menkes holds an MFA in Film Production from UCLA , is a directing member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and is a member of the faculty at California Institute of the Arts.

In our wide-ranging and eye-opening conversation over Zoom, Menkes and I discussed her thought-provoking and illuminating documentary Brainwashed: Sex- Camera-Power, which explores the sexual politics of cinematic shot design, showing how this visual language of cinema connects to both severe employment discrimination against women – especially in the film industry – as well as to the epidemic of sexual harassment and abuse that was exposed through the #MeToo movement.

Nina Menkes. Portrait by Ann Johansson.
Nina Menkes. Portrait by Ann Johansson.

This social issue documentary uses over 200 film clips from 1896 through the present and includes 23 interviews with women and non-binary industry professionals, including Julie Dash, Penelope Spheeris, Charlyne Yi, Joey Soloway, Catherine Hardwicke, Eliza Hittman, Rosanna Arquette, and Laura Mulvey.

This must-see film should be included in the curriculum for all filmmaking, screenwriting, and cinema studies students.

KOUGUELL: Let’s start with your personal background. Your mother’s parents were German Jews who fled Hitler’s genocide, settling in Jerusalem in 1933 and your father’s Austrian Jewish family perished in the concentration camps. This type of trauma, particularly for you as a first-generation American, forever remains. How does your specific background of family trauma and the violence of objectification inform your work?

MENKES: I’m so glad that you brought this up, no one else has brought it up. I happen to think it’s really key. My mother was a baby in 1933, and her parents got out of Berlin and she was raised in Jerusalem. My father’s whole family were all gassed to death. My father was taken as a child, in a secret rescue to Jerusalem in 1940. My parents got married there and later immigrated to the United States.

This experience obviously impacted my family. The fact is that they [researchers] found that trauma is transmitted via DNA, I grew up with the idea that systems of power can be corrupt, and systems of power that are supported by the majority does not mean they are right.

I grew up in a household that rejected the idea that popularity is a sign of moral greatness on a very deep level. A second important point to this, the Jews before they were murdered in the Holocaust, were objectified by the Nazis. You cannot treat another person in the way that the Jews were treated in the concentration camps if you think of them as full-on human subjects. You have to denigrate them in your own mind before you can even do these actions; this has all been extensively documented.

I’m not trying to make an equivalency between what happened in the concentration camps and sexist representation in film, there’s a big gap there. There is a certain level of intersection with the idea that objectification is not a beautiful thing, and objectification is tied to violence. Extensive research has shown that women who either consume objectifying media or self-objectify as it’s done on Instagram, every minute of the day, has been correlated to body dysmorphia, eating disorders, and higher levels of shame than those who don’t do it, and a higher acceptance of sexual harassment, and even sexual assault. This whole thing of objectification is not just fun and games.

KOUGUELL: Brainwashed stemmed from your lecture presentation “Sex and Power: The Visual Language of Oppression” which was at Sundance’s Black House in January 2018, for the launch of Gwen Wynne’s Eos World Fund. Tell me more about this and how it turned into this film.

MENKES: There are a lot of differences between the two. The lecture had 10 film clips and this film has 200, and millions of other differences. The idea was, how can we bring some of these concepts that some people in the PhD film theory world discuss, to film watchers who are not exposed to those ideas?

For those people who know my other work, it tends to be slightly towards the art film and avant-garde film direction. I certainly never thought about the audience when I made my own feature films. This documentary was about how can we prove our case and have the film be fascinating and interesting for sophisticated filmgoers, as well as some person who is not focusing on film as a profession, but a film watcher, which is kind of everybody.

That was challenging, and based on reactions, some people seem to love it. We’ve shown it in all the major film festivals and have gotten some amazing reviews, and we’ve also been attacked, and interestingly we’ve mainly been attacked by other women. People are very invested in their feelings about cinematic masterpieces.

KOUGUELL: Would you say that this lecture served as your script and/or outline for this documentary?

MENKES: The lecture is the core thing that we jumped off of but making the film I worked closely with the editor and creative producer, Cecily Rhett. In fact, I’ve been telling imdb.com to take my name down as writer. I don’t really claim to be the writer, but in a documentary film, the editor is in many ways the writer of the film. I was there for every second of the journey and participated in the decisions. There was no bona fide script as with most documentaries. Cecily had an amazing program called Dynalist, which we used to organize and structure our ideas. It was very collaborative.

Nina Menkes and Rita Hayworth. Photo courtesy BrainwashedMovie LLC.
Nina Menkes and Rita Hayworth. Photo courtesy BrainwashedMovie LLC.

KOUGUELL: In your own experimental narrative films, you worked with a small crew. How did that change, if at all, when working on this documentary?

MENKES: It seems like a bigger crew when you look at the credits, but each shoot didn’t have that many people. The overall project was more elaborative, in terms of making my narrative films, which I write, produce, edit, and direct.

This film was more complicated on so many levels. Regarding editing, I needed a pro editor who understood the deep issues that I am laying down here and knows me and my work and has background in commercial narrative and documentary film. I was lucky to get Cecily Rhett who had all those qualifications, I’ve known her for a long time, it was a very collaborative process.

There were a lot of people involved in the film research, and then there was the legal part, you have to clear every single clip through attorneys. There was a lot of attorney interaction and the attorney actually influenced a lot of our decisions, because he would say, ‘This clip won’t fly for fair use, you have to find another clip.’ Or he would say, ‘You need to include voice over because it won’t fly for fair use.’

The postproduction was complex, with all these film clips. There was no time code; every single picture and sound was hand matched by Jim Rosenthal, our brilliant postproduction producer.

With the score, I never worked with a composer before. It was challenging for me because I always did the sound myself on my films. Composer Sharon Farber did a genius job.

All those things made it a bigger production. A lot of the interviews were over Zoom because we were in the middle of the pandemic. For example, it was me on Zoom and a team in Atlanta when we interviewed Julie Dash.

Kouguell: How did these films that you include in your documentary, such as Orlando, LeBonheurDaughters of the Dust, and so on inform your own work?

Menkes: I was more reassured by seeing [Agnès Varda’s] Vagabond and [Chantal Akerman’s] Jeanne Dielman (which Menkes didn’t see until after making her film Magdalena Viraga) that there was someone else out there in the world who had similar feelings.

Kouguell: During production, the Brainwashed team reached out to representatives of almost all the living directors whose work is included in the movie, including Sofia Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino, and Denis Villeneuve among many others, to invite them for on-camera interviews. They declined the opportunity to participate.

Since the completion of this film have you heard from any of them?

MENKES: No not yet – the film is coming out on Friday.

thin black line

The film will open in New York City at DCTV downtown and in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Theaters Friday October 21st with a national rollout to follow.

Trailer

Learn more about the film and rescources here.

Susan’s interview with Camera D’Or Cannes Film Festival Winner, ‘Murina’ Writer and Director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic

My interview with Camera D’Or Cannes Film Festival Winner, ‘Murina’ Writer and Director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic

Gracija Filipovic in MURINA. Photo courtesy Kino Lorber.
Gracija Filipovic in MURINA. Photo courtesy Kino Lorber.

Kusijanovic generously shared her passion for telling the truth about characters and conveying cloaked violence in her film Murina. During our wide-ranging talk we delved into the themes of human nature and the physical and dangerous beauty of nature of water and the land, in conflict with the chauvinism, power, and a teen finding agency.

Julija is like the murina, the moral eel, an animal that will bite its own flesh to break herself free.  Kusijanovic

About Murina: Tensions rise between restless teenager Julija and her oppressive father, Ante, when an old family friend arrives at their Croatian island home. As Ante attempts to broker a life-changing deal, their tranquil yet isolated existence leaves Julija wanting more from this influential visitor, who provides a taste of liberation over a weekend laid bare to desire and violence.

Executive produced by Martin Scorsese, award-winning cinematographer Hélène Louvart (The Lost DaughterNever Rarely Sometimes Always, and Agnes Varda’s The Beaches of Agnes).

Kouguell: Let’s start by talking about how your short film Into the Blue evolved into Murina. As you mentioned, the feature is not an expanded version of the short. Please elaborate.

Kusijanovic: It’s the same actress and the same character’s name. I wrote the feature months after the short premiered. It came from my feeling that the actress was entering this very sensitive moment in her life and confronting that mentality we both grew up in; it’s a delicate moment of noticing changes both emotionally and physically. I had an opportunity to capture it forever.

Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic. ©Maja Medic.
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic. ©Maja Medic.

Kouguell: You co-wrote the script with Frank Graziano. Tell me about that.

Kusijanovic: We met at Columbia University. We decided to join forces. I had already written one-to-two drafts of the script. Frank brought the male perspective; the ‘second half of the brain’ to the movie. He’s a really great collaborator.

Kouguell: One of the most compelling story aspects was the ever-shifting triangulated relationships between your main characters.

Kusijanovic: It was an interesting process writing these characters. They are real people, they are toned down for the screen, In reality, in Croatia and in many countries, sometimes the reality is too harsh for the screen and I did have to make it more accessible, something not so repulsive to have you stop watching the film.

Ante, the father in Murina is 45. It is the age, where many men feel they haven’t accomplished something; they feel it’s never going to happen again and that’s what defines their life and why a lot of problems surface at that time. Ante, having a friend, Javier, who is such a powerful man next to you, to mirror your success, is a complicated dynamic between the father and Javier. And then having a woman who could still choose between any of them. From one side she has a dilemma – one man is seemingly free of his demons and on the other side is the man she created life with. To be the daughter, Julija, in that triangle of the three lovers; she can see everyone’s weakness — they’re all grown up kids, very harmed; they move by ego, guilt, and remorse.

[Interview with ‘The Power of the Dog’ Editor Peter Sciberras]

Kouguell: Without revealing any spoilers, and in simple terms, Julija seeks independence in order to survive.

Kusijanovic: Julija has to grow up very fast; certain things she assumes and very easily jumps to conclusions of what she sees and thinks she understands and certain things she needs experience to understand. It’s complex because her mother and father do have their reasons why they became this way.

It was very fun to write it. We had to build these four characters equally strong and equally damaged and equally troubled with strong desires and tormented between many possible choices.

Kouguell: The cinematography was incredible, particularly the underwater photography. Tell me about your collaboration with cinematographer Hélène Louvart.

Kusijanovic: Hélène’s amazing. She makes very complicated things very simple, and that’s her strength. She comes from the mountain and I come from the sea. We had very opposite and very compatible views of this world. She is very interested in human behavior and motivation.

We first started with characters, then the space, then the emotional and the oral rhythms, then came the light and shots, and the rest.

We wanted the characters to feel isolated, claustrophobic, tormented – even when they are in wide spaces. Even in the wide shots they feel even more locked in. Under the sun, there is no shade, nowhere to hide. Even in the apartment and on the rocks, this feeling had to happen. They were like raw meat simmering in the sun.

Danica Curcic, Gracija Filipovic, Leon Lucev in MURINA. Photo courtesy Kino Lorber.
Danica Curcic, Gracija Filipovic, Leon Lucev in MURINA. Photo courtesy Kino Lorber.

Kouguell: The emotions and rawness escalated in each scene.

Kusijanovic: There’s a level of agitation. The postcard settings are a context that even in these beautiful sunny places, violence happens. I don’t like to reserve the violence for the hidden dark alleys. Violence happens in the open, among many people and outside in the sun, at a holiday location, the beach.

Kouguell: Like the party confrontation in front of the guests.

Kusijanovic: Yes. Everywhere. The violence is always cloaked — into fun, into a so-called mentality. It’s not ‘mentality’ it’s f-ing violence and it’s something that a lot of cultures like to hide behind it.

Kouguell: Into the Blue garnered a great deal of attention at the Berlin Film Festival and led to Martin Scorsese coming on board as Executive Producer.

Kusijanovic: They trusted in me, and it was a great experience. It was nice to get a call from Martin Scorsese and get his notes.

[Interview with ‘tick, tick…BOOM!’ Screenwriter Steven Levenson]

Kouguell: My students, particularly my female-identifying students, always ask how they can break into the industry and get their work seen.

Kusijanovic: There is only one way. Write an amazing story, no one can refuse a good story. No one. There’s no way the story is so good that it can be refused. Now is the time. People are aware more than ever that films directed by women are getting financed. Women don’t need quotas; we just need to get financed. I hope in a couple of years we don’t need to use the terminology “female films” or “female directors”. There are “films” and there are “directors”. Thank you for the question.

MURINA will open theatrically on Friday, July 8th at the Metrograph in New York, and on Friday, July 15th at Laemmle Theaters in Los Angeles with national rollout to follow.

Interview with THE POWER OF THE DOG Editor Peter Sciberras

Script contributor Susan Kouguell interviews Australian film editor Peter Sciberras about carefully sustaining and building tension throughout the film, while still highlighting the complexity and surprises built into the characters and the story.

SUSAN KOUGUELL

JAN 26, 2022

THE POWER OF THE DOG BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH as PHIL BURBANK in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Cr. KIRSTY GRIFFIN/NETFLIX © 2021 Cross City Films Limited/Courtesy of Netflix.
THE POWER OF THE DOG BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH as PHIL BURBANK in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Cr. KIRSTY GRIFFIN/NETFLIX © 2021 Cross City Films Limited/Courtesy of Netflix.

The multi-award-winning The Power of the Dog now playing on Netflix, centers on charismatic rancher Phil Burbank who inspires fear and awe in those around him. When his brother brings home a new wife and her son, Phil torments them until he finds himself exposed to the possibility of love.

In my interview with Australian film editor Peter Sciberras we talked about carefully sustaining and building tension throughout the film, while still highlighting the complexity and surprises built into the characters and the story.

Peter Sciberras’s feature film debut HAIL (dir. Amiel Courtin-Wilson) was selected to play in competition at the 2011 Venice International Film Festival. That same year, the short film MEATHEAD (dir. Sam Holst) gained selection in the Cannes Film Festival, and was also awarded the Crystal Bear for Best Short Film at the Berlin International Film Festival. Peter’s feature film collaboration with David Michôd has spanned three films: THE ROVER, which premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2014; WAR MACHINE, starring Brad Pitt, which premiered on Netflix in 2017 and THE KING, which premiered at Venice International Film Festival and was nominated for best editing at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television in 2019.

Peter Sciberras
Peter Sciberras

KOUGUELL: Tell me about your collaboration with Campion.

SCIBERRAS: I never met Jane before this film. Jane likes to be in the editing room, which I like too. I like to be with directors as much as possible, to get a sense of their particular vision and the atmosphere they invoke. Watching the dailies with Jane, I was soaking in as much as possible — what she liked and what wasn’t there for her. It’s interesting finding how your perspective aligns with the director and making the film they want to make as opposed to what you thought they wanted to make.

That’s the beauty of being in the room together; when you have one idea, and it builds from there in a constant stream of thought. It was such a pleasure to work with someone who is so confident with their vision. And it was incredibly fun.

KOUGUELL: When you signed onto the project had you read the original novel by Thomas Savage?

SCIBERRAS: I had never heard of the novel. I make a point not to know the source material prior to editing, so as not to fill in ideas from the source material. I know what Jane added and her memory of the book and her version of the script.

[Interview with ‘tick, tick…BOOM!’ Screenwriter Steven Levenson]

KOUGUELL: You mentioned solving some of the challenges in the script and changes that were made from the script to the film.

SCIBERRAS: Some characters were introduced quite late and then they disappear for half the script. There was a lot of balancing and identifying how to bring them in and then deciding how much we can get away with. For example, with Phil he’s not in it for a long time and the challenge was keeping that tension building without losing Phil’s presence.

KOUGUELL: The scenes of the vast landscape with the cowboys reminded me, in terms of the tension and atmosphere, of Campion’s film SWEETIE specifically with the landscapes in the outback and the (Australian) cowboys – the jackaroos – dancing.

SCIBERRAS: Jane feels landscape in a particular way; when it comes to filmmaking, she’s very attuned to landscape and very aware of the atmosphere that’s evoked.

With the long panning shot over the hill, we wanted something that had a certain atmosphere and it had a beauty and sensuality with the shapes and shadows hidden in the landscape. Having those conversations with Jane I was very aware of how she sees the world, and how those things permeate every scene, and how attune she is to nature.

KOUGUELL: The tension between Peter and Phil is palpable and continues to escalate as the film unfolds. Let’s talk about that cigarette scene.

SCIBERRAS: The intimate sharing of the rolled cigarette between Peter – who rolls it ‘to be like’ Phil, Kodi (Peter’s character) was so terrific there; the boy’s taken over and the boy is commanding this scene.

KOUGUELL: It was a shift of power between the two characters.

SCIBERRAS: Yes. And cutting to the horses with Peter; the horses had witnessed something we (the audience) hadn’t seen. It was a moment to get a bit more abstract and lyrical and hopefully transport the audience and give the moment some space to live.

[INTERVIEW: ‘Son of the South’ Writer/Director Barry Alexander Brown]

KOUGUELL: The film’s pacing has a distinct rhythm.

SCIBERRAS: As an editor watching dailies and watching performances, you feel the pace the director was working at. It felt really clear to me. The film wanted to be really patient, and I felt that Jane set that up with Ari Wegner the DP. A lot of the pace comes from that, and hopefully the elegance and simplicity.

Weirdly when watching it, I was thinking of Hitchcock; that clear communication of framing, maybe there is something of that. Jane never mentioned that psychological reference with Hitchcock.

KOUGUELL: The film is broken into five chapters. The chapter cards were not in the script.

SCIBERRAS: Right. The chapters were not there to begin with. It was a big part of the edit. With the addition of the chapters, you were left with a question and a cliffhanger moment. In the script it was a fade to black. The chapters allowed us to leave you with a moment of anticipation. It was an interesting shift in the way the film moved, and it allowed us to cut it shorter as opposed to a soft transition.

KOUGUELL: Let’s talk about building tension and intimacy in scenes, and the importance of not being mysterious just to be mysterious in the scenes with Peter and Phil.

SCIBERRAS: All of Peter and Phil’s scenes were fun to cut. Their long lingering looks and a side glance – when you have such great performances it’s exciting. In their scenes, you don’t know what the characters are thinking, and you don’t know where the tension is coming from. Can you trust these people? The ambiguity, tension, and questioning their intentions.

KOUGUELL: Those lingering looks built the tension between these two characters and easily could have been seen as pretentious but it was not.

SCIBERRAS: Jane wants everything to resonate. She has a great compass for that reality, that’s why she can play in that world without it becoming pretentious; it’s very real and raw human. But she has very exciting high concept ideas that she executes and it’s that combination that live in her work and makes her work both accessible and layered. She’s brilliant on that level.

KOUGUELL: Some scenes were omitted and rearranged from the script.

SCIBERRAS: There was a lot of omitting around the start of every chapter.

The first act was tricky, you want to get to the Red Mill quickly where Rose and Peter are introduced, but you need to set up the brothers and how they communicate, and we need to tell backstory. It was a tricky dance to get the right feeling. The brothers have been this way for a really long time and one of them has had enough and he’s not all the way there yet.

The opening of the script opened the same as the book with the castration of the cow. We restructured that scene and put it later when Peter arrives at the ranch. With this cut, it gave it this kind of energy, foreboding and signaling what is going to happen with this boy.

KOUGUELL: The film successfully establishes characters’ relationships and back story without exposition and reveals critical information at just the right moments.

SCIBERRAS: We didn’t want to show too much too quickly. For example, with the magazines in the cubby that are discovered, we wanted the audience to slowly learn what was going on. It felt reductive the way it was originally in the script and we didn’t want the audience to say, that’s why Phil is the way he is.

We also cut the saddle scene. We loved the internal work when Phil’s with his objects of admiration and love, and we wanted to continue that feeling. Jane came up with the idea to have Phil swimming and that was a key restructure, and to have him floating like a crocodile.

KOUGUELL: Advice for our readers?

SCIBERRAS: For editors, understanding the story you’re telling and being free to explore, to create a space with a director to go deep and create a safe place where nothing is off-limits leads to interesting avenues and solutions to problems.

For writers, editors and filmmakers, persistence is everything. It is the key. Good ideas will come but stick to it. Honing intuition is a key thing as well. Allowing yourself to feel the story, and immerse yourself in the characters, understanding the story from the inside and finding the best way to tell it.

The Power of the Dog is now available to watch on Netflix.


Interview with ‘tick, tick…BOOM!’ Screenwriter Steven Levenson

In a wide-ranging discussion, screenwriter Steven Levenson talks about writing and collaborating for the stage, film and television, delving into the creative process, and the challenges of adapting tick, tick…BOOM! – a true story to the screen.

Steven Levenson is a playwright and television writer who authored the Tony Award-winning book, Dear Evan Hansen. His plays include If I Forget, The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin, Days of Rage, and The Language of Trees. In television, Levenson co-developed and executive produced the FX limited series Fosse/Verdon and was a writer and producer on Showtime’s Masters of Sex. His honors include the Obie Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Drama League Award, Helen Hayes Award, and the John Gassner Memorial Playwriting Award.

About tick, tick…BOOM! Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Lin-Manuel Miranda makes his feature directorial debut with tick, tick…BOOM!, an adaptation of the autobiographical musical by Jonathan Larson, who revolutionized theater as the creator of Rent.

Andrew Garfield as Jonathan Larson in tick, tick...BOOM!. Photo courtesy Netflix.
Andrew Garfield as Jonathan Larson in tick, tick…BOOM!. Photo courtesy Netflix.

Kouguell: Let’s start by talking about your career trajectory.

Levenson: I started acting in school plays and musicals, and continued acting through college and loved it, but toward the end of college, I began to feel that as much I loved acting, I wanted to do more than just interpret ideas and words. And then I discovered playwriting. My playwriting professor (Pulitzer prize winner) Paula Vogel was very instrumental in giving me confidence.

When I left school and moved to New York City, I got a job as a literary assistant at Playwrights Horizon and for two years I wrote coverage and kept writing plays. I had plays produced at Roundabout Theatre Company and other underground theaters, and then made my way to Los Angeles and making Dear Evan Hansen.

Kouguell: Working with composers is an important element of your body of work.

Steven Levenson
Steven Levenson

Levenson: I always loved musicals and had a great deal of respect for them. I was eager to work with composers and found the process very intuitive, it felt like a natural fit. It is a very collaborative process and it’s very creative and inspiring how ideas multiply with multiple people.

It takes some humility to work with music in general. If the music in a stage play is great, and after the show when people leave the theater, the book or script will fade into the background if it’s doing its job.

With Tick, Tick…Boom! the challenge there was to take songs that already existed and try to sew the two together. In a way it’s more challenging because you can’t make changes to the songs. It was really a creative and inspirational constraint; as a writer, sometimes constraints are the most freeing things.

The Larson Papers at the Library of Congress

Director Lin-Manuel Miranda, producer Jen Tepper and Levenson viewed the Larson Papers at the Library of Congress, an extensive archive created a few years after Larson’s passing. A treasure trove of the more than 200 songs Larson had written since 1978, the archive contains early versions of numbers from Rent and tick, tick…BOOM!, songs and notes from his musical Superbia, letters, scores, notes, photographs, notebooks, cassettes, demo tapes, and books.

Kouguell: This project was a particularly unique adaptation process; adapting elements from Larson’s personal life as well as his own writing.

Levenson: At the Library of Congress archives we looked at Larson’s papers and spent maybe four or five hours making copies of things. tick, tick…BOOM! began as this solo piece that Jonathan wrote and performed himself, but there were many different drafts of it over several years.

We found every possible draft of tick tick…BOOM! and every draft of Superbia, which was challenging because none of them was carefully labeled or dated. There were five drafts of tick tick…Boom!, our task was to find the commonality and differences and find the most vital and fun material. It was an exciting challenge.

We went back to Larson’s original show, which was about 45 minutes long. Making it into a film, we wanted to do what Jonathan couldn’t do in a solo show, and the great gift of the screen, we could see him create it and see those events and expand them. It was like piecing together a puzzle and getting inside Jonathan’s head as a writer as best we could.

I wanted to put the solo show in and build around it. We would see the story unfold and another frame around that, the present tense viewing of this story and with Susan as the narrator at the opening and end of the film, to get the full impact and understanding of the context of the story, knowing that Larson went on to write a musical (Rent) that changed theater.

Levenson then went on to talk about how they structured the material, listing the songs on a white board and constructing the dialogue around them.

Kouguell: I imagine you felt a strong sense of responsibility to Larson’s life and his work.

Levenson: It was a joyful responsibility. As a team, I think we all pushed harder to make it right, and to always be excellent. There were little things – for example, the scene in Central Park where we are seeing seagulls fly by, the seagulls were Jonathan’s idea. It was freeing as a writer, I was there to serve his vision, and I took my ego out of it.

Kouguell: You write for the stage, as well as for film and television, and worked as a showrunner. In film and television, scripts are considered more of a blueprint from which others work. How do you approach the writing process in each medium?

Levenson: I think plays are about living in real time and in the way conversations really unfold and the rhythms of actual speech and you can luxuriate in that, there’s a different kind of time.

With a script for film and television, the rhythm is about picking the most important moments in a scene and cutting to the meat of it. It’s more about story; plot is a much bigger driver, whereas in a play you can take your time and stretch this. I’m always conscious of that.

For a musical, one line in a song can capture a scene that’s several pages in a script.

Kouguell: Advice for writers?

Levenson: The best creative advice I was given was to take in as much as I could; to read and see as much as I could. If there was a script, I read it to learn how to figure out how it worked. It’s how to find your voice. Immerse yourself in what you love.

Interview with TOGETHER Screenwriter Dennis Kelly

Susan Kouguell interviews Tony®, Emmy® and Olivier Award winner writer Dennis Kelly about his funny, provocative and poignant new film ‘Together’. The film follows one family navigating the challenges faced by people worldwide during a once-in-a-lifetime crisis and finding a way to survive — together.

Dennis Kelly
Dennis Kelly

Dennis Kelly did not set out to write a piece about COVID, but as the pandemic began, he was hearing people around him say things like, “We’re all in this together, isn’t it great? Let’s make videos and make it fun.” However, he thought, what if everyone isn’t in this together? “How much fun can it be if you hate the person that you’re with or you’re losing your job or you’re one of the people who wasn’t able to work from home — the ones that kept society going?”

Directed by Academy Award® nominee Stephen Daldry, Together stars James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan who portray a couple forced to re-evaluate themselves and their relationship through the reality of lockdown.

I had the pleasure to speak with Tony®, Emmy® and Olivier Award winner writer Dennis Kelly about his funny, provocative and poignant new film Together. The film follows one family navigating the challenges faced by people worldwide during a once-in-a-lifetime crisis and finding a way to survive — together.

Dennis Kelly wrote the screenplay for the feature Black Sea and his work for theater includes Debris, Osama the Hero, After the End, Love and Money, Taking Care of Baby, Orphans, The Gods Weep, The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas and Girls and Boys. His television credits include creating and writing UtopiaPulling, and The Third Day. Kelly also wrote the book for the Olivier-and Tony-winning Matilda the Musical.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

KOUGUELL: Let’s start with the hot button topic of taking on the challenge of writing about COVID and this specific time period.

KELLY: I’ve never written about anything so immediate — and it’s still going on. I didn’t want to write about COVID, it just happened. I was busy during lockdown; I was lucky to have work all the way through this time. One night my partner and I watched the news together and I was stunned by the idiocy I saw, and fueled by the anger I wanted to write about two people who felt very different about what was going on, and questioned what if you didn’t like the people you were with during lockdown.

[Interview with ‘Esther in Wonderland’ Filmmaker Stephanie Bollag]

KOUGUELL: Together was shot in ten days after ten days of rehearsal. Were you present?

KELLY: Yes, all the way through. Daldry wanted me there. He was extraordinary. He guides you through with brilliant ideas and he has lots of experience and is not threatened by suggestions. It became a collaborative process.

KOUGUELL: There are only seven scenes in the film, which gives the film a layer of intimacy and tension.

KELLY: Originally there were just five or six scenes. There was a different kind of ending before.

James McAvoy (left) and Sharon Horgan (right) star in Stephen Daldry's TOGETHER, a Bleecker Street release Credit: Peter Mountain
James McAvoy (left) and Sharon Horgan (right) star in Stephen Daldry’s TOGETHER, a Bleecker Street release Credit: Peter Mountain

Kelly went on to talk about adding and cutting scenes, and we agreed that this was a great example of the adage of the heartbreak of “killing your darlings”.

KELLY: This was definitely a challenge in this film especially when actors give beautiful performances. One must think about the whole of the piece.

KOUGUELL: Your two main characters break the fourth wall.

KELLY: I write for television, theater and film, and throughout my career, my advice is, never think that you have three jobs divided by three, they’re all different disciplines. And then I broke that rule. This script is definitely influenced by playwriting.

What we were doing was different, than for example The Office. In Together they were talking directly to the audience.

KOUGUELL: Often that device can take the viewer out of a movie, but not in this case.

KELLY: We didn’t know if it worked at first but then you look at Sharon when she has a direct to camera speech and you really experience what she’s feeling as this woman.

KOUGUELL: The characters are known as “He” and “She”. Why no names?

KELLY: I’m terrible with names. In my first plays, I had students and people writing about my work come up to me and say things like, ‘Why are there so many characters named Louise?’ With my play Girls and Boys, I refused to give the characters names, because human beings are constantly accessing others, and there is that internal process when someone hears a person’s name, they immediately label them.

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KOUGUELL: Without the names, the viewer can impose their own story onto these characters.

Together_Poster_2764x4096

KELLY: Yes. And He and She are such different characters; He is a staunch conservative and She is more of a liberal. He calls She a socialist.

KOUGUELL: We don’t see He and She interact with their son very often, which is an interesting choice.

KELLY: Originally, the boy wasn’t in the script. Daldry wanted him moving around in the background, and I really liked how he did that and the boy he cast was wonderful. At the end of the film, after a while you get a sense of their son when he’s on the trampoline. I was thinking about my daughter who at the time was two-years old. I was thinking about all the kids during this time. There’s so much we all had to process during lockdown. 

Susan Kouguell Interviews ‘Esther in Wonderland’ Filmmaker Stephanie Bollag at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Esther in Wonderland, JM Jüdische Medien
Esther in Wonderland, JM Jüdische Medien

“As a second-generation immigrant, I am interested in identity and the excavation of the “self” amidst societal and cultural norms. As a result, my films are roadmaps of conflicting emotional and physical expression that occupies that space “in-between.”

— Stephanie Bollag

I spoke with Stephanie Bollag during the Tribeca Film Festival where her short film Esther in Wonderland had its world premiere in the New York, New York 2021 program. We discussed her current and past work, influences, and her experience at NYU film school.

Stephanie Bollag is an award-winning director, writer and producer from Zurich, Switzerland based in New York City. Her short films won a number of Jury and Best Short awards at festivals worldwide. She previously worked in film in Switzerland, the UK and Israel, where she assistant-directed the Oscar-nominated Israeli drama Beaufort.

[Interview with ‘Souad’ Egyptian Filmmaker Ayten Amin]

Set against the racial tensions of 1991 Crown Heights, Esther In Wonderland depicts two seemingly opposing cultures through the eyes of a Hasidic young woman. Drawn to the expressiveness of hip hop and breakdance, Esther tests the boundaries of her restricted existence as a young married woman in a Hasidic community in 1990s Crown Heights.

Kouguell: Your short screenplay Esther In Wonderland won first place at the 2019 Atlanta Film Festival and the 2018 Shore Scripts Screenplay Competition. Let’s talk about the genesis of this project.

Bollag: It started four years ago. I met a break dancer and together every weekend we went to (dance) battles and the story organically came to be. Esther’s story is stuck in this world where she can’t express herself. This was a theme in all my shorts. My dad, who worked in the fashion industry, studied to be a rabbi and Judaism has been a big part of my life. I merged these ideas together.

Kouguell: Your integration of found footage from 1990s New York City seamlessly worked to set the tone, atmosphere and setting of your film.

Bollag: The idea of using the footage was not in the script. The choice was to add layers of identity and music and genre. I already shot 8mm and digital, and I thought why not add another layer of time, texture and material. So many people were naysayers but my editor was very open to this idea to add this footage.

Stephanie Bollag at Tribeca Film Festival 2021
Stephanie Bollag at Tribeca Film Festival 2021

Kouguell: You’re a classically trained painter with a background in dance and fashion. You describe your work as a quilt of cultural and textural influences that range from visceral to narrative storytelling.

Bollag: I’m very visual in my thinking and how I remember things are through textures and pictures. I grew up going to museums; the emotional impact of beauty and pain are so close together.

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Kouguell: Your film offers minimal backstory through dialogue about your main characters, which was a strong choice. It will be interesting to see how you expand upon this in your feature.

Bollag: In the feature we will find out more information about how the characters know each other, their communities and conflicts, as well as the racial tensions. I love when there are many questions and the audience has their own answers.

Kouguell: Tell me about your experience in film school.

Bollag: We had strong filmmakers in my class, and we had very open and honest discussions. It was very formative to me as an artist.

Our professors emphasized learning story structure and that was really good. One professor said to me, you’re asking too much of your actors so you need to explain things more in your script, and I thought no, you don’t have to wait until you’re working with Meryl Streep. You can make actors do what you want with little words.

Kouguell: Speaking as a screenwriting and film professor, I know firsthand that not every professor is a good fit for every student. That said, I find it important for students to get out of their comfort zones and take classes with professors who might not be an obvious choice for them.

Bollag: Yes.It’s important to choose a teacher who doesn’t have your style or someone you’re scared of.

Kouguell: Advice to screenwriters and filmmakers?

Bollag: Build your voice. Stay true to your voice and find the best way to express it.

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