Su-City Pictures East, LLC

Screenplay & Film Consulting By Susan Kouguell

Category: 2024 TRIBECA FESTIVAL

Susan Kouguell’s Interview With ‘Vulcanizadora’ Writer/Director/Editor and Co-Star Joel Potrykus, Producer Ashley Potrykus and Star Joshua Burge at the Tribeca Festival

June 13, 2024 / / Comments Off on Susan Kouguell’s Interview With ‘Vulcanizadora’ Writer/Director/Editor and Co-Star Joel Potrykus, Producer Ashley Potrykus and Star Joshua Burge at the Tribeca Festival

For Script Magazine

This dark comedy highlights Potrykus’s distinct vision with a gripping dramatic pulse, and unrelenting tone and atmosphere. Familiar themes in Potrykus’s work emerge again in ‘Vulcanizadora’: nihilism, isolation, loneliness, society-rejected outsider, however this time he digs further, tackling new territory about fatherhood and father/son relationships.

Written, directed, edited, and co-starring Joel Potrykus, Vulcanizadora, centers on two friends who trudge through a Michigan forest with the intention of following through on a disturbing pact. After they fail, one of them must return home to deal with the legal and emotional repercussions.

Joel Potrykus is a Michigan-based independent filmmaker, specializing in screenwriting and guerilla style production. His films have screened internationally and are currently streaming on the Criterion Channel. His screenplays are part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science Permanent Collection, and the George A. Romero Archival Collection. He received an MFA in Writing for Film and Television from Emerson College and is an assistant professor at Grand Valley State University.

It’s been over ten years since I first met husband and wife team Joel Potrykus and producer Ashley Potrykus at the 2014 Locarno Film Festival where I interviewed them about their award-winning film BUZZARD, starring long-time collaborator Joshua Burge. In 2012, their film APE, which also starred Burge, premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival, taking the Best Emerging Director – Filmmakers of the Present award and a Best First Feature – Special Mention.

Vulcanizadora, Potrykus’s latest feature, world premiered as part of Tribeca’s US Narrative Competition and this time I met with Joel and Ashley Potrykus in New York City now joined by stars Joshua Burge and Solo Potrykus, Joel and Ashley’s 6-year-old son.

This dark comedy highlights Potrykus’s distinct vision with a gripping dramatic pulse, and unrelenting tone and atmosphere. Familiar themes in Potrykus’s work emerge again in Vulcanizadora: nihilism, isolation, loneliness, society-rejected outsider, however this time he digs further, tackling new territory about fatherhood and father/son relationships.

Joshua Burge in Vulcanizadora (2024).
Joshua Burge in Vulcanizadora (2024).Courtesy Sob Noisse

Kouguell: The three of you have been collaborating for a long time along with your filmmaking team Sob Noisse.

Ashley Potrykus: I joined the Sob Noisse band for their first feature and Josh before that with Coyote. When I first joined, film was not my area at all and with each movie, it was another stepping stone and as that happened, our Sob Noisse band got bigger.

Joel Potrykus: At some point, I realized I couldn’t make a movie without Ashley; she’s the other half of my filmmaking brain that keeps everything organized and clears my thoughts.

It is like a band, and we call it Sob Noisse; I look at it like a musician band would be and everyone has the instrument they play. Josh is definitely like the lead singer, he’s the voice of what we’re trying to say and what people should be looking at. He’s got a certain face, persona and rhythm.

Joshua Burge: I never had any intention to be an actor, I went to school to be a filmmaker and to write. I got bit by the music bug while I was there and started performing, and Joel was a fan and then asked if I could be in one of his movies. The first one was Coyote and at that point, I didn’t really understand what acting was, and then with the first feature, Ape, I felt I was part of the Sob Noisse band.

Ashley Potrykus: Ape was the first time, at least for me, and I think for you, Josh, that we felt that we each came into our own role a little bit more.

Joshua Burge: When we started, everyone was wearing all the hats.

Kouguell: This is another low-budget feature for you.

Joel Potrykus: It’s the biggest budget we ever worked with but still a vastly low budget. We shot on 16 mm. I think it’s less rare that these micro-budget features are breaking out and we are now in the norm. We’ve shot on 16mm before but never a feature. We didn’t think it was financially feasible but it is. If you shoot the way we shoot, efficiently and economically and not burning through twenty takes, you can totally do it.

Kouguell: The script definitely does not follow a traditional 3-act structure. Just when I thought the plot was going to turn one way, it shifts. Yet, all these twists and turns are earned; they have been subtly set up. At times it also felt a little improvisational. How scripted was it?

Joshua Burge: It was very scripted. The only exception was sometimes we had an idea before we’d start rolling and we might try another line or an extra tack to bring something home. But for the most part, it was all on the page.

Joel Potrykus: I’ve always wanted to be an improv-style director so I was like, let’s start with an outline, we’ll shoot from an outline, but then it turned into a real script with real dialogue. We didn’t have the luxury to improvise when we were shooting.

Kouguell: How long was the shoot?

Joel Potrykus: We scheduled it for 10 days, which was really bonkers, but somehow we got it done in 8 days.

Ashley Potrykus: And we had a big location move, which was a two-hour drive with all of our gear and our crew, and closing up Airbnb’s within that time frame.

Joel Potrykus: We are a band, we know the rhythm, we know the beat.

Kouguell: How much input on the script did Ashley and Josh have?

Joel Potrykus: I’m a control freak so I wrote on my own. It was about the tone, and I know that Josh knows how to play that tone. We’ll all read it and then talk about it, and I’d take those ideas and incorporate it into a new draft.

Kouguell: In the opening scenes of your film, the music choices set an unsettling yet somewhat comedic tone and atmosphere. Let’s talk about the tone of the film.

Joel Potrykus: The three things Josh and I would say before the film were: “Sad, funny, scary.” We got to hit those.

Kouguell: We’ve been talking about the consequences of the characters’ actions. For Joshua’s character, seeking redemption is complicated and defies expectations for the viewer.

Joel Potrykus: It was the chance to see his character’s guilt and shame and remorse; he’s terrified of that redemption and what that means, and the repercussions of redemption.

Joshua Burge: I think my character is settling for relief, maybe not redemption.

Kouguell: Josh, the scenes you had with Solo were very powerful.

Joel Potrykus: What was it like to play Jeremy, Solo?

Solo Potrykus: Practice, practice, practice.

Ashley Potrykus: He didn’t love rehearsals, but one day he looked at us and said, “Mom, Dad, don’t worry, I got this.”

Vulcanizadora, key art
Courtesy Sob Noisse

Joshua Burge: Solo nailed every line, he was so well-prepared and so professional.

Kouguell: Your script subverts the traditional screenwriting rules by breaking them and successfully defying the expectations for the viewer.

Joel Potrykus: I teach screenwriting and we use Save The Cat and I drill the 3-act structure. The more that I teach, the more confident I am subverting that 3-act structure because I know what audiences subconsciously expect these moments to happen; and so when they don’t happen, I feel like a lot of audiences will have a hard time following along with the structure so it’s my job to put in these little pieces that keep you holding on to the next scene. I like this script because there’s not even a midpoint, there’s a two-thirds point. I’m curious what the reaction will be because it’s not giving audiences what they are expecting. 

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Vulcanizadora had its World Premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival in the US Narrative Competition.

Upcoming Tribeca screenings:

Tuesday, June 11 – 2:30 pm EST at Tribeca Film Center

Thursday, June 13 – 8:45 pm EST at AMC 19th St. East 6

Susan Kouguell’s Interview with ‘Treasure’ Writer and Director Julia von Heinz at Tribeca Festival

June 13, 2024 / / Comments Off on Susan Kouguell’s Interview with ‘Treasure’ Writer and Director Julia von Heinz at Tribeca Festival

Award-winning German filmmaker Julia von Heinz talks about her latest film ‘Treasure,’ from the adaptation process, dealing with transgenerational trauma as a theme, and what she hopes audiences take away from seeing the film.

SUSAN KOUGUELL for Script Magazine

I had the pleasure to speak with award-winning German filmmaker Julia von Heinz about her latest film Treasure, which had its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival.

Award-winning director and screenwriter, von Heinz won the German Film Award for Best Children’s and Youth Film with her debut, Nothing Else Matters, her 2020 film And Tomorrow the Entire World competed at the 77th Venice Film Festival and was nominated for Best Film at the German Film Awards. She earned her doctorate at the Film University Konrad Wolf in Babelsberg and teaches directing at the University of Television and Film in Munich.

About Treasure: Set in the 1990s, Lena Dunham plays Ruth, an American businesswoman who takes her father Edek (Stephen Fry), a charmingly stubborn Holocaust survivor, on a road trip through Poland to make sense of her family’s past. Treasure is the third part of von Heinz’s Aftermath Trilogy, which deals with the repercussions of the Holocaust in Germany and globally.

Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry in TREASURE (2024).
Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry in TREASURE (2024).Courtesy of Bleecker Street and FilmNation

Kouguell: The script is an adaptation of Lily Brett’s best-selling autobiographical novel Too Many Men. Tell me about the adaptation process and working with your co-writer and husband John Quester.

Julia von Heinz: This is the fifth project I have co-written with my husband. Sometimes it’s very difficult because we sleep with the characters and wake up with the characters and we are in love with the characters. It keeps the relationship alive.

I like the process of working together. We’ve known each other for 25 years, and have been through a huge pool of events together. We both loved the novel. My mother gave it to me in the late 90s. (Like Lily Brett, von Heinz’s mother is the daughter of a Jewish survivor and part of that “second generation” to which Lily had given a voice.)

Julia von Heinz
Photo by Peter Hartwig

It’s a 700-page novel with a lot of side plots that you don’t see in the movie. It took us a long time to get to the core of the father and daughter story. (von Heinz describes their relationship as a “love story” between two individuals who could not be less alike.)

Kouguell: How much input did Lily Brett have during this process?

Julia von Heinz: Lily was at our side. She was so interested in the process and read from the very first draft to the last draft. It’s such a personal story for her.

Kouguell: Tell me about taking this script to the screen.

Julia von Heinz: Once we had the script I felt I could rely on it when we started filming. When we were on set and working closely with my cinematographer, I knew I could fill in the voids of elements that were not in the novel and bring my energy to make it flow. It’s the most challenging film in my career thus far.

Kouguell: You spent three days shooting at Auschwitz.

Julia von Heinz: The first time I went was in 2016 and it was a shock to experience. I returned many times after that. We were allowed to film outside the fence and in the parking lot along the border because we couldn’t interfere when visitors were there and film crews are not allowed inside. Our crew was permitted to take photographs near the barracks and our visual effects team could insert images behind the two actors in post-production.

Kouguell: The film centers on the theme of transgenerational trauma; father and daughter deal with their respective traumas quite differently. How did you approach this in the script and then onto the screen?

Julia von Heinz: In Lily’s book, there was so much inner monologue with the character always questioning herself and we couldn’t adapt that for the script. We didn’t want to use voiceover.

For example, we needed to find a way to convey the self-harming that is in the novel to the screen. In the novel, it is portrayed with her dieting and the difficulties about her mother. In the script, we conveyed her self-harming by her tattooing. We discussed this with Lily and she agreed that this was a good action to show.

Treasure, poster
Courtesy Bleecker Street and FilmNation

Kouguell: What is your reaction when people dismiss Treasure without seeing it by saying it’s just ‘another holocaust film’?

Julia von Heinz: I heard that a lot. There isn’t a film about the second generation, and this is a generation that we need to tell stories about. We know that this trauma exists, and even exists in the third generation. I feel we should tell these stories, and I feel very confident about this.

Kouguell: What do you want the audience to come away with after seeing this film?

Julia von Heinz: I want to tell my audience to call your mother, father, children – and share stories that might not be easy to share and build a bridge. Share stories that are not only related to the Holocaust. There are so many important stories to share, especially with a father.

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Treasure opens in Theaters nationwide on June 14, 2024.

Treasure had its International Premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival in the Spotlight Narrative.

Susan’s Interview with ‘The Freshly Cut Grass’ Filmmaker Celina Murga,  Presented by Martin Scorsese at the Tribeca Festival

June 13, 2024 / / Comments Off on Susan’s Interview with ‘The Freshly Cut Grass’ Filmmaker Celina Murga,  Presented by Martin Scorsese at the Tribeca Festival

SUSAN KOUGUELL for Script Magazine

Celina Murga discusses the scriptwriting process, the major themes of gender roles in the workplace and at home, and the conflicts and repercussions of the actions of the male and female professor in each of these environments.

Premiering at the Tribeca Festival in the international narrative competition The Freshly Cut Grass directed by Celina Murga, and written by Murga, Juan Villegas, and Lucía Osorio, is executive produced by Martin Scorsese.

About the Film

A male professor at a university is in conflict with his own roles as husband, father and teacher. The eventual relationship with a female student highlights his crisis. As in a mirror, a female professor, also in crisis, has an eventual relationship with a male student. The duplicate story questions the power relations between genders.

I had the pleasure to speak with Argentinian writer, director and producer Celina Murga during the Tribeca Festival about The Freshly Cut Grass. We discussed the scriptwriting process, and the major themes of gender roles in the workplace and at home, and the conflicts and repercussions of the actions of the male and female professor in each of these environments.

The parallel storylines are thought-provoking, and avoid cliche and predictability.

Still from The Freshly Cut Grass (2024).
Still from The Freshly Cut Grass (2024).Courtesy Barraca Prods.

Kouguell: Let’s start with the evolution of Freshly Cut Grass from script to screen.

Celina Murga: It was a challenging process from the beginning because we knew that the possibilities of telling the two stories about human relationships are complex. It was challenging to mirror the stories.

We worked a lot with the actors. We shot first with Joaquín [Furriel] and then the Marina [de Tavira] story to mirror the story on a set. We worked hard to try to find a way to connect with their situations and to build these characters, knowing the complexities they are immersed in.

Kouguell: Tell me about your screenplay collaboration with your co-writers Juan Villegas, and Lucía Osorio.’

Celina Murga: I always like to be involved in the writing process and write stories I care about. I like to work with others who give their point of view to what I’m doing. It’s a very democratic process. Sometimes in the beginning, Juan and I wrote one character, I wrote about Natalie and he wrote about Pablo and then we switched characters.

We were going to shoot in 2020 but then there was the pandemic. During this time we kept reflecting about the story and characters. We showed the script to others we trusted because it was important to figure out if the situations were subtle enough.

Kouguell: In his executive producer role, what input did Martin Scorsese have on your film?

Celina Murga: He allowed us to reach more producers. In a more creative way, he read the first version and saw one of the first edited versions. He was part of the creative process, and very supportive and generous with me. He’s someone who likes to be there and be part of it, and at the same time aware of me as a woman director and not someone to push the story he wants to tell on me. In that deeply profound way, he is a true mentor in allowing me to find my own voice.

Kouguell: You mentioned that the story developed from two characters in crisis, and that this idea proposed a very particular structure that restricts and provokes certain ideas of mise en scène, and aims to be a mirror in which two very similar stories take place. How did you develop the script’s structure?

Celina Murga: When we started writing this film in 2018, in Argentina we were in a big movement regarding families and we were talking about these ideas of how men and women are sometimes different and many times are also equal.

In the story we wrote, we knew that these two characters were going to be in a middle-age crisis and in a particular moment in their lives, asking about themselves as fathers, mothers and teachers. An important part of the process was to find the scenes where they were similar and at the same time not literally similar, and that was a really beautiful process to find a way that each character has their own particularities.

THE FRESHLY CUT GRASS POSTER
Courtesy Barraca Prods.

It happened in the script but also in the editing room process; the editing room is another way of rewriting the script and it’s very important.

Kouguell: Although the film is set in Argentina, the story feels universal.

Celina Murga: Argentina is where I was born and my home, a place where I know and am interested in talking about human behaviors. And it is very universal. For me, the film is about how we relate to each other and what it is to be a family, and what it is to be in a marriage of many years. It also questions how society and culture have made us a part of these systems. My main goal is to find more honest ways of being together in this world.

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The Freshly Cut Grass had its World Premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival in the International Narrative Competition.

Upcoming Tribeca screenings:

Thursday, June 13 – 3:00 pm EST at AMC 19th St. East 6

Friday, June 14 – 3:15 pm EST at Village East by Angelika

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