Boar Film interviews Alex Ross Perry

Alex Ross Perry is an American Film director, whose film Queen Of Earth had its debut at the Berlinale. I managed to talk to him about his technique, his influences and who he collaborates with.

Redmond Bacon: The main character in Listen Up, Phillip doesn’t like talking to the press, do you feel much the same?

Alex Ross Perry: No, I’m happy to do it. I have no qualms with it, on day one anyway which this is.

RB: Does it get tiring at the end of a festival?

ARP: Only because of the sheer amount of actual energy and breath. I’ve been doing this for three hours and probably spoken more than I do for three days.  It’s a very bizarre physical experience.

RB: The premise of your film Queen of Earth and also the use of close-ups and monologues, reminded me a lot of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. Was that an influence at all?

ARP: Not really, I haven’t seen that movie in probably ten years. I would imagine they’re unavoidably similar, given the premise, but I didn’t feel the need to revisit it because I thought it would be too on the nose and I didn’t want there to be anything from that movie that I accidentally stole.

RB: Too much anxiety of influence?

ARP: Maybe, so if there’s anything in there that’s similar that’s entirely an accident.

RB: What movies did you watch for inspiration?

ARP: The big double feature I saw when writing the movie was at a Fassbinder series and was the Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant and Martha, which are both single location movies about women. Petra von Kant specifically is about the dynamic between two women in one room and that was a pretty major movie to me. Watching that double feature I thought these were the kind of movies I wanted Queen of Earth it to feel like, and then you take those films which are very simple dramas, very character driven and then you start looking at some of the other types of “broken women” films so those films tend to be horror/thriller films, so there might not be an obvious connection between Fassbinder and Carnival of Souls, but I see it as a very clear tradition of cinema; female driven narrative about isolation and loneliness. These are movies that are very connected in my mind.

RB: Are you drawn to female roles?

ARP: I just start thinking about some of my favourite films, and these are them, not exclusively, but the power of storytelling in these films and the type of opportunities you have when doing a film like this is incredibly liberating. Really fun to tell that kind of story, and it’s a story I’m very excited by.

RB: You’ve worked twice now with Elizabeth Moss. Do you want to work more with her in the future?

ARP: Yeah, I wouldn’t work with anyone twice who I wouldn’t want to work with twenty times. So long as someone wants to work with me over and over again they’re going to have to. I’ve had the same cinematographer on four movies, same editor, same composer, same costume designer. However, there’s also plenty of people that I don’t care to work with a second time.

RB: So you’ve only shot on film. Do you prefer working on film?

ARP: Yeah, definitely. There’s no real reason other than that I just prefer it, and it’s totally viable and affordable. For the movies that I want to make and the feel that I want them to have and the look that I want the audience to be subconsciously connected to, it’s the only option.

RB: I really liked the cinematography in the picture. One shot in particular was half of Catherine (Elisabeth) coming out of her room and the other half of the kitchen, clearly cut in half by the banister. How long you spend on framing and blocking?

ARP: Absolutely no time whatsoever. I have no patience for that, and neither does the cinematographer. It’s sort of whatever feels cool at the moment. This comes from the movies I make being mostly handheld so I didn’t really have the opportunity to do that and this is just a more exciting, more spontaneous way of creating images than making storyboards and saying “Oh we don’t quite have it yet”. So whatever feels good in the moment and looks cool and excites me and excites him I think will excite other people because him and I are fairly discerning. So it’s not like that, it’s just like day ten of the shoot and noticing that if you put the camera here it’ll create an entirely artificial split-screen. Let’s do it now.

RB: So my favourite shot of your films I’ve seen so far is the final one of The Color Wheel. I found that scene kind of funny yet uncomfortable at the same time, but really appreciated way the shot remained unbroken for twelve minutes. Was that made up on the set?

ARP: No, I knew that we wanted to do it that way. There’s something very filmic about it when you’re shooting a shot which is an entire roll of film. And we do it in Queen of Earth as well with a nine-minute shot. In Color Wheel you see a lot of awkward stumbling because it’s two non-actors failing at successfully remembering their lines. In Queen of Earth you have two incredibly actresses who do Broadway and Aaron Sorkin and they can memorize if they have to. So what we got in that nine minute shot was performance of the highest calibre.

RB: I liked the use of the horror genre in your film even though it’s not quite like a horror. It might lead a few people watching to get frustrated because it sets you up for one thing then it ends up being quite different. Do you like playing around with genre expectations?

ARP: A little bit. In Listen Up, Phillip it was sort of fun to take a movie that seems to be a straightforward comedy and then turn it into a very un-fun, very serious drama. And it’s sort of, why not, you can be both things, you can make both kind of movies at the same time if you’re respectful and aware of these conventions, and if you treat both things equally than the whole thing will feel cohesive. So making a movie that starts off as a Fassbinder about two women that slowly transitions into a seventies horror movie, that’s an honest transition. It’s not just inserted for shock value, it’s actually done because it makes sense.

RB: Did you feel you had to make something smaller after the literary sprawl of Listen Up, Phillip?

ARP: It’s not that I had to, it’s just that most people wouldn’t want to make a smaller film. It’s only common logic that everything you do has to be bigger and you have to keep building and building. Our producer on this film – Joe Swanberg – was very adamant that that was not the way it has to be. It’s not a step backwards, it’s just a different challenge. The challenge then becomes channeled into your film. I was very happy to try it.

RB: It reminded me of after Annie Hall, Woody Allen made Interiors.

ARP: That’s what we were talking about all the time. A big, beautiful romantic New York comedy followed by a sterile, cold, humourless movie – that I love – but people that were not prepared for. Still it’s a beautiful film, and should be judged on its own merits and not because it’s between Annie Hall and Manhattan.

RB: The male characters in your film are always quite mean and petty but your female characters have more chance of being sympathetic like Ashley in Listen Up, Phillip, when she has her own section in the movie and you really feel for her. Do you think women are inherently more sympathetic than men?

ARP: Definitely. Or at least more fun to watch being sympathetic.

RB: The music in the film set the tone very early for what the film world be like? Did you work closely with the composer on establishing the tone?

ARP: We had fun on this one, as the same composer, Keegan DeWitt, who did the music on Listen Up, Philip, I didn’t know him until late in the process. We edited the music with temp music then sent it to him later. But on this movie knowing I could count on him and what he was capable of I talked to him before we shot and sent him relevant films before shooting. He was looking at the footage as soon as we got it and was making music already and we were even listening to it during the shoot. So the first cuts of the movie had unfinished music in it and allowed the film to take the rhythm around the final music. This let the music be incredibly prominent and we cut scenes to play up the music we already had, so I think it was a process that was very rewarding for a film like this.

RB: You’ve tackled a different genre with each film. What will be next?

ARP: I’m trying to make both a larger movie – a very complicated move in the right direction – which is not a musical but a music movie about musicians or maybe a movie about art history and antiquity which is totally academic and more attending an academic conference than walking into a movie but could be pretty interesting. The first one is very big and will be hard to make but the other one is very small and bizarre yet easy to make happen quickly.

Image source: berlinale.de