On Creative Nonfiction

The funny, smart, poignant universe of Lena Dunham developed first through her shorts and the Nerve.com Web series Tight Shots, but a distillation of her concerns is perhaps best seen in her feature debut Creative Nonfiction.

Starring as the film's lead, Dunham plays Ella, a somewhat wide-eyed creative whose college entanglements with sometimes love interest Chris (David Unger) and tenuous, quick-to-betray friend Carly (Slaine Jenkins) inform the work of Ella's still developing screenplay. As the two stories are told simultaneously - the real life, digi-framed angst of Ella's crush and burn and the poetic, film-grained narrative of her screenplay - Creative Nonfiction lives within realms of the humorous and bittersweet, exploring without bashfulness or shame the difficulty and absurdity of growing up.

Noralil: The humor of your work audiences can always cling onto, but what I love about Creative Nonfiction is all its bittersweetness and the way that you were able to make the jokes play into that. The first joke of that nature in the film is the ‘hegemony’ joke. [The main characters quip about the borderline excessive, pretentious use of the word ‘hegemony’ by artsy collegiates.] It’s within the first five minutes of the film. It's a very intellectual humor, but it’s also playful, sexy and irreverent...So, I was hoping you could talk a little about the way you approached humor, specifically for this story, because at the end of the day it’s actually a really heartbreaking one.

Lena: A lot of experiences in the film just came out of my general experience and understanding of what it was like to be in college, and, I think, when you’re in college, if you don’t laugh at it, you will die. The experience of being in this very strange, surreal world with all people your age who are away from their parents for the first time, it’s a recipe for disaster but also a recipe for humor, and so, I’ve always felt like I’m in the experience of college but am also watching it from outside, being like, “Oh, my god, this is so absurd. I can’t wait to tell this story to my dad, or I can’t wait to write this in an e-mail to my friend who’s somewhere else.” Collecting those experiences and thinking, “What do these make as a whole?,” it just felt very natural that humor would be a part of telling that story.

Noralil: Talking about the relationship between characters, the friendship between Ella and Carly I think is great. There’s a moment where, I think, Ella turns to Carly and says, “I never would have been your friend in the past.” To me that’s what so much of college is, just randomly meeting people by circumstance.

Lena: Those friends that you make during college orientation, sort of out of desperation, you’re like, “I cannot be alone. I’m leaving high school, this group of close knit people,” or even a not close knit group of people but you have your family. So, I was thinking [with the film] about those friends who I just went, “Oh, you’ll work for a few days.” Then you develop these attachments that seemingly come from nowhere with these people who you initially thought, “This could never be a real friendship.” They become capable of totally hurting you and being a part of your life. It’s sort of unbelievable because it’s making friends in a way that’s both really organic and really artificial.



I definitely had a situation during my college orientation where I met this girl, and we were both transfer students. So our experience as being transfer students made us come together, even though we had virtually nothing in common. The friends I made later on were like, “Why are you hanging onto this friendship?” I was like, “Well, we really communicated during orientation,” and of course, ultimately, something similar to what happens in the movie, happened. I realized, “Oh, I had an instinct about you the whole time.” Then, of course, because [Oberlin College] is a small campus, I was petrified to put it in a film. Ultimately I decided I had to, and it was my quiet revenge. So now, whenever I see her on campus, I feel both this secret pride and total humiliation, like, “You probably don’t think about me that often, yet I took the time to make a movie with a character based on you.”



Noralil: It’s definitely strange, the relationship between females. Lynn Shelton’s My Effortless Brilliance came out this year, and in talking with Film Threat, she mentioned that, some of her female friendships end in these platonic break-ups, and at times they're worse than she expected. The thought is interesting as it applies to this film in that there’s a seeming disintegration of almost all strong female relationships here. Even though Ella is still friends with Audrey Gelman’s character [Edie] by the end of the film, there’s such flippancy to their interactions that I’m not even certain that friendship is lasting.



Lena: I totally agree with that statement, that platonic break-ups can be even more traumatic. There's a way that those come a lot more naturally than romantic relationships, so when those break-ups happen in a friendship it can be really, really shocking.

Not to get too meta about the whole thing, but it was really interesting filming with Audrey, who's a really close friend of mine in real life. Talking about that flippancy you describe, sometimes I would have guilt because I'd be like, "You could be off doing something else, and I'm forcing you to be in my movie for no money, sit around and help me work through all my problems in this context." I think there's a way that girlfriends tend to take advantage of each other and think that the other will always be around, and when that evaporates that can be incredibly traumatic in a way that it's not with a male relationship because in the back of your mind, you always expected that to fade. I don't know if that's too dark a perspective to take, but especially in college, you are always in the back of your mind thinking, "Okay, this guy is nice, but how long can this last?" whereas with your girlfriends, you don't see an end in sight.



Noralil: Before we talk about the relationship between Ella and Chris - and I'm eager to get to that because some of my favorite dialogue in the film is in their scenes - how did you actually go about the writing process for this?



Lena: I was actually trying to write the screenplay within the screenplay. I had this idea which started by listening to The Best of Paul Simon, sitting in my car and coming up with this road trip narrative. I was trying to write it, and it just was not going anywhere. It felt so flat, and I felt so disconnected from it.

I'd just had this whole real life drama play out at college, which was really what was occupying my mind, and one night I was lying in bed, feeling like a big loser because I couldn't get the screenplay out...Suddenly it occurred to me that if this other thing was occupying my mind so consistently, I really had to write it down. Basically, in two weeks, I expressed what had happened to me in the previous semester of college. Then, after I vomited that out, I tried to work with it and make it more cinematic, make it a story that had more of an arc than real life does. So it was a very organic process that came out of real, personal discomfort and a desire to have something creative come out of that.

Noralil: So then, as you wrote in the Joe Lewis' article, there's that meta-personal angle.



Lena: Exactly. That's a word my boyfriend likes to use a lot. He says that about all the movies I like. I'm a big Caveh Zahedi fan. I'm a big fan of taking three steps back from your life and then looking at it from a million different angles. I find it really soothing and also kind of provocative.



Noralil: With that meta-personal angle - and already you mentioned how organic it was to involve Audrey - how did you go about working with the rest of the cast?



Lena: (Eleonore Hendricks) I always imagined in that role. We have a mutual friend named Bill who once told me that he thought Eleonore looked like a homeless, little girl, and suddenly I could not stop seeing her as a homeless, little girl. So I immediately imagined her in that part, and she was so amazing, just came in, filmed for a day, just totally embodied this character even though (the role) was silent. So really in the 16mm part [of the film] I was thinking about the way that people looked because I knew I wasn't going to hear their voices.



With the characters at college, in the part that's really dialogue heavy, I was thinking a lot about people who I could have really organic interactions with. There was a script, but I knew I wanted people who were not to actory and would work with it a pretty natural way. David was actually my boyfriend's roommate. He's an improv comedy guy, so I knew he could be funny, but I had this feeling that it also had this edge to it. And so we read together, and I just felt like, "You're perfect. You're cute in a weird way, but it's not like you're some traditional heartbreaker stud," which makes the whole thing a little sharper when he actually does hurt her feelings.



Then the character who de-virginizes my character is my friend (Jeffrey Cristiani), and frankly I cast him because I could not think of anyone who would be less inhibited. He's the least inhibited human I've ever met, and I knew he would just make it so fun and comfortable to shoot that scene.



Noralil: That scene's intensely sad.



Lena: I know! It's so funny because afterwards, Jeff was making these jokes like, "Lena, that was pretty spicy, right? We should try that again," just making stupid jokes, and after he saw (the scene), he was like, "Oh, my god, I did not realize how depressed you looked. I was sitting there feeling satisfied with myself, and you're like crying."

Noralil (laughs): That's exactly what would have happened in real life. That makes it even funnier.



Lena: He was like, "This makes me feel so bad for every girl I ever de-virginize." I was like, "Don't get too serious with it." Then my dad met him at a film screening, and my dad was like, "You have shamed our entire family." Of course my dad was joking, but Jeff looked like he was going to have a heart attack.



Slaine, who plays Carly, she's actually trying to be an actress in New York right now; she's had some appearances on Gossip Girl, (laughs) which seems kind of appropriate. She was always considered the hottest, most movie star girl on our campus. We actually went to high school together, and so I was really comfortable with her. I've known her for a long time.



Noralil: Now because you star in a lot of your work, how do you go about working with your actors and then working with yourself as an actor?



Lena: I can probably stand to work with myself a little more as an actor. I'm often worrying so much about other people that I just throw myself into it. With my actors, we wouldn't do very much preparation. I'd have them look at the script, and then we'd just get together an hour before we were meant to shoot a scene and just talk it out. I'd say, "Do you have any issues with the script? What does this make you feel?" Then we'd basically do it for the first time on camera, which I think might not always work, but it worked for this project. It lent it that slight feeling of discomfort that it has.



The challenge of acting while directing is that there are times I wish I could have been more in control of the visual aspect, and so I think it's really important to have a director of photography that you trust if you're doing this. This is a very specific, casual camera style, but if I were doing something more tightly structured, I'd be much more nervous stepping out from behind the camera.

Noralil: It was very interesting, the use of the camera here, specifically with the portrait of Ella. I know you were working with cinematographers Brett Jutkiewicz and Hannah Lesser in each medium. What I noted is that within each format, Ella seems aware that she's being watched, and at different points, specifically at the beginning of the film, Ella looks directly in camera. So there's a very strange, intimate relationship that you develop with her as a viewer because you don't know if she knows you're the voyeur. I didn't fully understand that space, if there was a fourth wall, so to speak, to the film, or if the fourth wall was intentionally thin and transparent.



Lena: What happened basically was that I showed one of the first scenes to a film professor I have. He's amazing, a documentary filmmaker, and so he's coming at it from a really different perspective. He was like, "You know, Lena, I would say that the genre this most reminds me of is low-budget porn." At first I almost burst into tears, but he said, "I mean that as a compliment," which was really ridiculous to hear from a teacher.



He really helped me to see that the camera was a character and that we were so up in there that to think that the characters were oblivious to this was almost impossible. I realized that somehow the camera could, in some abstract way, reflect the feeling of living in a dorm, in this close proximity with all these other people, in this time in your life when you're going through all of these really intense, quick changes. I started to think, at least in my own head, about the camera as being the eyes of other people that you know are there and often try to ignore. Sometimes it becomes impossible to do that. I didn't think that much about the "looking at the camera," but, afterwards, when it came up a lot, I thought, "This is not something that I need to cut around. This is something I need to embrace in this particular project."



Noralil: And, it's interesting in that it's only her character, and it's appropriate because it's her story. For me, as a viewer, it would have been jarring had any other character been equally cognizant of that gaze.

Outside this idea of lo-fi porn, there's also something interesting about the idea of a writer being able to step outside herself, and then there's the lovely narcissism to her character, which she even mentions to Audrey's character, that she worries that she's written herself into a story. In a lot of ways, that's what that time period is about, of being young, in that bridge to adulthood, that you have to go through that narcissism.



Lena: Being a teenager is such a narcissistic time. It's also sort of an addictive feeling to be that focused on yourself, and it takes a while for that to wear off.

Noralil: Then perhaps all of adulthood is just fighting off layers of narcissism. It's almost as if it's a defense mechanism.

Lena: Absolutely.



Noralil: Then beyond that the narcissism is also a soulful center. So the narcissism isn't a bad thing.



Lena: But it's a very present thing.

I'm always struggling with the idea that filmmaking itself, especially the kind of filmmaking I'm interested in, is generally a really narcissistic activity. I'm sometimes really self-critical about that.



Noralil: Being self-critical, how do you self-evaluate in these pieces? Are you able to step outside yourself, and say, "This piece of art is mine,"? What does that piece of art, piece of film become to you at the point that it premieres?



Lena: A big thing for me, and I thought about this a lot when I was making Tight Shots, in which I didn't even bother to change my name, was just how scary it was. If you're a filmmaker who's not acting in your own work, it's still very much yours, but it's somehow easier to distant yourself because your image is not involved. I found that out when I directed a piece that I didn't appear in, and it felt really good.



Both my parents are artists. My dad is an artist who paints graphically sexual images that he then puts up in galleries all over the world, and I think that seeing how comfortable he is with the work that he produces, saying, "This is mine. I did this," not going so far as to say, "Screw you if you don't like it," but to say, "I understand that you could have a problem with this, but this is important for me to do," I've always admired that in him. So even when I can't really achieve it for myself, I try to keep that attitude in mind.



Noralil: I'll digress for a second to speak more about your family...Knowing that your parents are artists, and they were obviously supportive of you when you went to study stand-up comedy as a teen, what was it like growing up in that environment?



Lena: It's been really interesting. I'm incredibly close to them, and I really respect what they do. It's been really great because it gave me the opportunity to--I never felt like anything was off limits to me. I never felt like there was anything that it wouldn't be appropriate for me to explore. In fact, it felt like the only thing that would be inappropriate for me to explore would be some normal person career. (laughs) Maybe "normal person career" is not the right phrase. But, I felt like what would be most alien to my parents was if I chose to do something that was more people-focused, like becoming a doctor, becoming a lawyer, something that wasn't so turned inward in a certain way.

It's also interesting that, because I am so close to them, it's sometimes hard for me to separate, "I'm a kid, and you're my parents, and we're at different phases in our lives." They're really productive, doing things, showing their work all the time, and somehow I felt that I had to keep up, even though I'm thirty-eight years younger than they are. Because we're such good friends, it was hard for me to remember that I wasn't being held to the same standards.



Noralil: Before you mentioned your dad ribbing on Jeff a bit at a film screening. What did your parents end up thinking Creative Nonfiction?



Lena: It was really interesting. My mom [filmmaker Laurie Simmons] executive produced it, which really just means she bought pizza for everyone and rented the vans...She made a movie two years ago called The Music of Regret, which was a weird, artsy short that starred Meryl Streep. Everyone wants to see things that Meryl Streep is in, so it got more attention because of that. And so, I was really nervous about what she'd think. I really wanted her to feel like it had been a good investment of her time and energy, and I also really respect what she does. She doesn't really watch any movies that are that low-budget or done on digital video, and so, I think, for her it was an aesthetic that she didn't understand, that there were other things that shared aesthetic interests with it. So she was a little bit like, "This looks different than everything else. People are going to think this is so nutty. What is this?" Then, as I introduced her to more film that's interesting to me, she started to see it in context more, and she actually called me last week and was like, "I watched the movie again, and I really like it."



Noralil: That's great.



Lena: It was really nice. We're actually trying to write a script together right now. That to me, the fact that she wanted to do that, showed that she got it and saw why it was important for me to do at least.



Noralil: Talking a bit more about the film that you like of the same aesthetic, I know you often collaborate with the Red Bucket crew, and in credits for Creative Nonfiction, you thank Joe Swanberg and Andrew Semans. What other films and filmmakers are you watching now? What about that aesthetic is exciting you right now?

Lena: A lot of people have said this, but the movie that rocked me was Funny Ha Ha. I watched that right before I wrote the script. I didn't know that you were allowed to do things like that. I just didn't think it was possible to make a movie that talked about people your own age doing the things that they actually do. When I realized that, and the fact that it looked so kind of handmade, it was amazing to me. That introduced me to the cult of what was called "mumblecore." It introduced me to Joe Swanberg's films, which eventually introduced me to Nerve Video. Then I saw Four-Eyed Monsters and films by the Duplass brothers. I really respect and appreciate all of that. I'm so glad it exists. And, Lynn Shelton, I love her work too.



The filmmakers who I think about--their visual aesthetic and their ideas about story--the people that I feel the most lined up with are: I'm obsessed with Caveh Zahedi. His way of telling a story is amazing to me; I've also always really loved the work of Nicole Holofcener. I've always been attracted to the way she approaches humor. She's so funny, but it's so subtle. It's something I've aspired to, ever since I saw Walking and Talking. I was like, "This is making me feel so many things at once." I was really impressed by how multi-layered it was, how the humor was in there. I just saw In Between Days by So Yong Kim...It's such an incredible movie. It was made in Canada. She's a Korean-American woman, but it's in Korean. I was trying to describe it to someone, and I said it was like mumblecore in Korean, which gives mumblecore a whole different energy--this idea of two people not being able to communicate, then the whole other layer of them being immigrants. It's shot on digital video but elevating digital video to the highest, most beautiful form of photography. It tells a really important story about a lady, which is always so nice to see. And Mike Leigh. Everything Mike Leigh that's ever happened I just can't get enough of. Sometimes I feel like I'm too much of a fan of everything just because I love watching movies so much. It's not always that hard to please me, which can be embarrassing.



Noralil: It's awesome to have that passion for everything. It's what informs other work and allows it to be good. If you do passionately love that much, you're able to absorb all of that and make it more readily available for your own work. I've yet to meet a filmmaker who doesn't love films passionately.



Lena: It's funny; my boyfriend's job is to coordinate all the video equipment for my college. He's like, "You know what's really weird? I have this job, and I go out with you, and I don't really like movies that much," which is so interesting. He can like a specific movie, but the medium doesn't do it for him the way that music or literature does it for him. It's kind of nice because if he was as obsessed with film as me, (laughs) we'd have really one track conversations.



Noralil: What's he into?



Lena: His thing is philosophy, and he's also a dancer. He's a really serious modern dancer.



Noralil: That's awesome.



Lena: It's really awesome. I don't have any understanding of dance, but he's so good at it. It's amazing to watch him because he loves doing it so much. Also, I always thought modern dancing was really frilly, but it can be very masculine looking I've learned.



Noralil: On that note about philosophy, my favorite line of Creative Nonfiction is one after Chris asks Ella for a three word description of her transcendent experience as she was going through her existential crisis, and she comes up with, "I went godward"--which is an answer I love.



Lena: Oh, I'm so glad you think so. I felt a little sheepish about that. I didn't want to be too weighty. I guess everyone gets self-conscious about that.



Noralil: There's a lot of validity to that statement, and going back to this idea of the meta-personal, I was wondering how much of that statement is true for you. What actually do those three words mean in the context of this film?



Lena: I have a rotating existential crisis where every three years I'll be like, "Oh, my god, we're all going to die," that feeling that we all have for the first time in the seventh grade, and then it never quite goes away. At least for me.

I don't think of myself as an atheist, but I'm definitely not a religious person. So, for me, personally, it's just the idea of having some kind of faith--maybe faith is the wrong word--but an investment in the idea that there's something greater than yourself. If I thought that I was the be all and end all, I would not be able to continue on.

Also for Ella what was happening was that she was coming to realize that there is something beyond college, beyond the humiliation that she's suffering. She, obviously in the movie is me, when I'm acting it, but she's very embarrassed about the fact that she said that out loud but hoping it can be helpful.



Noralil: That's true of most things we say to people. When we're honest, there's always a vulnerability. So there is that embarrassment we feel when we're being honest with others.



Recently I was having a conversation with James Ponsoldt and Amy Seimetz about their short film We Saw Such Things, and they were talking about this idea of honesty. They both took different approaches to the topic. James was saying that this digital aesthetic that pulls a lot from improv and naturalism, that the goal of that aesthetic is to make something look real, but the reality of any form of cinema is that it's a fabrication. So all you can actually aim for is not reality but honesty.



Lena: Absolutely.



Noralil: I agree with James about that, but then Amy came back and said, "You know, I think in the end, you can't even be honest in a film because there's no universal honesty. All there is, is a feeling. All that cinema is, all narrative cinema is, is a map of feelings. Your feelings can be honest, but there's no universal truth that's honest."

In thinking about that concept, as it applies to this film, I wonder where you stand, if your goal was to replicate some reality, or if this concern of honesty was more pressing, or if in fact, like Amy, you throw both of those concepts of reality and honesty out the door and end up with this map of feelings?



Lena: (The idea of reality) is such a flawed concept to begin with. So, for me, my major goal was to be honest about--and, I couldn't even really be honest about others' experiences because the whole film was done so through my lens--but, to be honest about all the super-embarrassing feelings that came up for me during that time in my life, that "special time in a woman's life". I just hoped that my honesty could resonate with other people, but especially other women. In my heart of hearts, that would be what I would wish for.

Noralil: Before we move on to talk about your shorts, I wanted to know if there was anything else about Creative Nonfiction that you wanted to touch on?

Lena: I was just thinking, actually this morning, about the main method of distribution of Creative Nonfiction thus far. I’m used to distributing over the net, which I haven’t done with this. So my main method of distribution now has been DVD trades with other filmmakers, just sending it to assorted people who I know and even don’t know, and getting their thoughts about it.

People’s thoughts about the relationship between the 16mm footage and the digital footage are so varied. Some people wish there was more 16mm; some people wish there was no 16mm. Some people say they are distracted by the 16mm; some people say that they are distracted by the video. Somebody told me that they thought cutting between those was just an exercise in technique, but it wasn’t a very interesting plot device; where somebody else thinks that’s what gives the movie its plot. So I’m still trying to work out the relationship between those two things in my mind, but I know that it was something I was really compelled to think about, the stories we tell ourselves versus what’s actually happening to us.

Noralil: What’s interesting also about the difference between the 16mm and the digital here is that even within your shorts there seems to be a dichotomy of theme, a battle between the absurdity of Zooquarium and Making Sense, for example—and Making Sense walks this line best—and their sadness. That dichotomy is for me visually manifest in Creative Nonfiction with the 16mm and the digital. It was almost as if whatever sadness existed in the digital could only find its voice in the 16mm.

Lena: That makes so much sense...In my head I’ll see scenes from my life from multiple angles, from multiple cinematographic angles, and I feel like the sadder things are, the harder things are, the more I distance myself in that way. I was trying to convey that for my character, and I’m really glad if it got through to you in any way.

Noralil: There is something about celluloid film that makes it instantly melancholic. I think that’s because we see it as a passé format, or at least, it’s coming to be seen as a passé format, and anything of the past gains this importance that’s built in loss.

Lena: Working in film it’s like—you know how when you look at old pictures of your parents, you imagine that their whole world had this strange slightly yellow tint that the picture has? That’s always been the thing for me, like, “Wait, Mom, when you were a teenager, everything was black and white, right?” That phenomenon, I don’t totally know how, relates to my feelings about film.

It’s also really interesting to work with such a chancy medium. You’re making it, and you don’t really know what’s going to come out. That’s crazy to me. I’m of a generation where you take photos and see them instantaneously on your camera, and so there’s something inherently emotional and anxious for me about working with film.

When I was shooting digital, I was often scared that my message and the strength of my desire to make the film, all the hard work that had gone into it, would be lost because of the fact that it was on this very casual-looking medium. Somehow I felt as though when I was shooting on film that it really allowed me to show what I’d been feeling all along but hadn’t had the resources to convey. The formality that I always felt about it was suddenly apparent, and so I felt like, “This needs to be in here for people to understand how serious I am about this.”

Noralil: Do you worry about, at all, as an artist releasing Creative Nonfiction, the praise or censure that you’ll receive?

Lena: Just within the screenings I’ve had with professors, the screenings I’ve had at school, (the feedback) was really great. Joe [Swanberg] was so supportive of the movie and forwarded it to South by Southwest and Sarasota. Neither of those festivals wanted to take it, but I got nice letters from both of the programmers who were like, “This is interesting, but it’s not going to fit into my program this year.” In some ways, that was really disheartening, and the criticisms I could level at my work are: maybe they think this is some quasi-mumblecore that doesn’t quite make it. There were lots of criticisms that I can love about my work, and I also feel like it’s a pretty weird movie. So when it resonates with someone, after it hasn’t resonated with other people, that’s even more exciting.

On Tights Shots & Short Films

Chewing the last bits of cheese off a cold piece of pizza, Lena Dunham puts aside a final college paper for the hour. She's been working on it a while.

“Is the pizza still as good four hours later as it was four hours ago?” I ask.

“Totally not! I was working and somehow couldn’t focus on the pizza, but I feel guilty being like, ‘Well, your life is just over.’”

The personification, oddly enough, isn't jarring. In the playful mind of Dunham, where absurdity, humor and meaningfulness all take turns downstage, the comment comes across with the same childlike truthfulness as her energetic iterations of "That's so interesting!" and "I'm so glad..." She says this herself later, that there's a quality kept almost adolescent in her personality.

In the first part of the conversation, Dunham spoke in depth about her feature debut Creative Nonfiction. In this second section she expands upon that dialogue while also addressing the work on her short films.

Noralil: I’d like to pick up where we left off by talking about your work with [cinematographers] Brett Jutkiewicz and Hannah Lesser. Hannah had shot 16mm for you on The Auteur, and you’ve worked with Brett on digital [Tight Shots]. Can you tell me about those working relationships?

Lena: Hannah is a very strong- willed, creative cinematographer. She’s not trained at all, and she’s actually a Gender and Women’s Study major, so sometimes she’d have little director moments where from behind the lens, she’d be like, “Um, I don’t think this is necessarily in line with my feelings about feminist aesthetics,” which became a running joke with us. She’s really fun to work with because she’s learning a lot just like I am, so the whole process was just really new.

With Brett, who’s amazing and who I met at Slamdance last year, I saw his cinematography work with Josh [Safdie] on The Back of Her Head, and I was so blown away with what he did. It was kind of my fantasy that he would work with me. Even though he’s only two years older than me, he’s been to film school, and he’s done so much that it felt like he was way above my level. So it was really exciting when he was like, “Yeah, I’ll shoot a movie with you.”

For me, working with Brett, which I first did on Tight Shots and then on Creative Nonfiction—because I’m a liberal arts college student—it was sort of my version of film school. I learned so much from him. He’d be like, “No, you have to say, ‘Cut’ and ‘Action’ in this order.” He was literally teaching me how to roll film.

I’m so attracted to what he does aesthetically, which is very clean but also really handheld and verite. I’m so impressed by how he keeps those two styles going.

Noralil: His work with you on Tight Shots is very different, I feel, than on Creative Nonfiction. We’ve talked about this before - the comment from one of your professors about that pornographic, voyeuristic feel of Creative Nonfiction - that there’s something much more intimate and slightly invasive about the film, where there’s a more humorous, hands-off feel to Tight Shots. How did you find those two styles working with Brett? How did you move onto that more invasive, intimate side?

Lena: I’d only ever seen film Brett had shot, so when I asked him to shoot digital it was an adventure. It was like, “I know you don’t usually do this, but you’re such a capable guy that I know you can.” He was really open, and he had very clear ideas about how (Tight Shots) should be shot. Because it involved so much improv and because it was such a collaborative process, he wanted to be able to move among people, he wanted to be able to make snap decisions. So the style of Tight Shots of him being there but not getting in anyone’s way, it was a very natural cinematography to emerge from the way that we were working on the show.

I remember getting comments from the people at Nerve.com because they were used to Joe Swanberg-style right up in there, right up in your face, right up in your boobs, right up in your crotch (laughs), and there were times that they thought we had too many wide shots. I guess it wasn’t “in your face reality” enough for them. For me, I thought it was a very intimate way of dealing with the camera, but that may just have been because I was on set and saw Brett being one of the group with us. It was interesting; it was always that struggle. There’s a way that cinematography can be really sexy, and so there was always this struggle with Nerve.com about whether it was sexy enough—because that’s what they want. I was just so happy with the way that Brett shot the scenes that were at all sexy because he’s such a gentle person, and I think that shows.

Noralil: That perfectly describes the difference in styles that should have been evident to me, the idea that in Creative Nonfiction the cinematography serves the purpose of illuminating one particular point of view while in Tight Shots, because the whole premise of the show is that you can’t judge anyone although everyone is up for judgment, the camera necessarily has to be nonpartial.

Lena: That’s true. I’m so glad because particularly shooting the pilot of Tight Shots where we introduce everyone, and there’s a big group, (Nerve.com) was like, “Why are you always in wide shots?” I realized that we had no protagonist, and so there was no base to be shooting from.

With Creative Nonfiction, not to sound terrible, but it was always about me, and Brett really got that, that it was all either on my character or from the point of view of my character. With that, I couldn’t even conceive how those shots would look. I just said, “Brett, I’m overwhelmed. I need you to do this,” and he just made it happen. He’s a real film history buff, a very scholarly guy, and I know that he uses a lot of references when he shoots. So I just let him do this thing because I trust his relationship to other movies and his relationship to me.

Noralil: Most of the artists that I talk to are young, and yet put so much pressure on themselves. There’s a fascination we have in this society with youth culture displaying preternatural genius, and I do feel it’s completely unfair.

Lena: My dad teaches at Yale graduate painting department, and he says, “Every kid makes work that they think is the best work they’re ever going to make, and they think that right now they’re at their peak of artmaking, and they need to be getting shows, and they need to be selling their work, but they’ve come to grad school to learn. If you think you’re supposed to be making work that’s free of mistakes, that completely defeats the purpose of your 45,000 dollar a year graduate education.”

For me, I can see so many issues with [Creative Nonfiction], so many things that even now, eight months later, I would do differently, but I also feel that it’s the movie I could make at the time. That’s not something I want to shy away from. I can see myself learning as I watch it, and I don’t feel scared to show that to people as long as they understand that I’m not going to just continue in the same vein eternally. I’m learning so much everyday just from watching and doing.

Noralil: A piece of art can only exist in that moment, and that’s not to say there isn’t something universal and timeless in that. I’m really attracted to the fact that a song ends. I’m really attracted to the fact that a film ends, that something has a definitive point at which it will no longer be perceived the same way again. Perhaps that’s the lesson that applies to this film for you as an artist and also for anybody who watches it, that you’ll only ever perceive this film, you’ll only ever make this film, the same way once.

Lena: My boyfriend is always planning projects, and he’s always like, “I just don’t know if now’s the best time for me to do it. What if I just do it, and then in six months figure out that it should have been entirely different? Maybe I need to give myself more time.” When I give myself more time, it doesn’t happen.

Creative Nonfiction was really funny because I was initially going to make it—it was right after I’d been to Slamdance, and for some reason Slamdance attracts people who e-mail everyone with shorts films, and producers are asking for the ideas you have, who represents you, crazy when you’re just like, “I made this five minute movie on my Handycam. What are you talking about?” Somehow, because Slamdance is in Park City, it attracts that attention—so, I was initially talking to a producer about making it, not for very much money but for a lot more than I made it for in reality, which was in the very low thousands. Then I realized I wasn’t comfortable with the amount of control the person wanted to have and the changes that they wanted to orchestrate. So I knew it was either: do it, or the project loses momentum and dies.

There are certain times where I’m like, “You know, my basic message got across, but I think I could have done that more elegantly if I’d taken even another three weeks to plan it.” But, also I’m always feeling like I need to seize whatever opportunity comes my way. It can be a little compulsive.

I know this: If I want to keep making movies, and if I want to do it for more money, it can’t be such a quick thing, like if I think of it Tuesday, I shoot it Friday. It’s not going to work that way forever, so I enjoy embracing that right now.

Noralil: And, then it does lend itself to rapid self-exploration. It’s very hard to tackle that longer piece unless you know you have a question that’s going to take you a long time to answer. I really do feel like, in a certain sense, when you’re making a film, you’re posing a question. Then, by the time you’re done with the film, you should have an answer.

...There seem to be threads in your work: this idea of absurdity, this idea of the bittersweet, this fun-loving, prankster playfulness. Within all of that, what do you thinkl your primary concern is? If you look at all your pieces together, what is the question you’re trying to get at?

Lena: I think about this with my parents. With my mom’s work, the movie that she made is called The Music of Regret, and the retrospective was called The Music of Regret, and she thinks so much about nostalgia, regret, what could have been but wasn’t. That’s just her thing, and she’ll never get away from it, I feel. So, I’ve thought before, “My mom’s got a thing; what’s my thing?”

I don’t know if I’ll never get away from it, but I think a lot about who we think we are versus who we actually are, our self-defined persona versus how we’re perceived. A lot of the characters I play especially have a very different idea about themselves than the people around them do. Particularly with my character in Tight Shots and some of the other characters I’ve played in shorts are girls who maybe on the inside know the impression that they’re making. It’s very hard for them to access, and so the basic thrust of it is that they have no idea what they look like. Sometimes they have no idea that in some way they are appealing, but most of the time, it’s just that they have no idea what assholes they’re being.

That’s something I’m concerned about with other people too. Rel’s character in Tight Shots has a very different idea about how women perceive him than what is actually happening. The fact that Rel was willing to poke fun at that part of himself was so incredibly appealing to me because it felt like it was so much in line with what I’m trying to achieve.

Noralil: Then the question, specifically with Rel, is: How much of that delusion or lack of self-awareness do you manifest into truth? Does your self-perception become the reality because that is the most potent vibe in the room?

Lena: Totally. With Rel, it’s like, there’s one way in which girls are like, “Oh, my god, he’s just a sleazy, dorky Jewish boy. What does he think he’s doing?,” that part where Sara’s like, “He thinks he can just look at us all, and we’ll just all take all our clothes off. It’s horrible.” But, then he thinks that, and so it happens. He does look, and the clothes come off.

Have you heard about that terrible movie called The Secret?

Noralil: Is this based on the book?

Lena: Yeah, it’s based on the book. It’s this self-help revolution, and basically the secret—I’m going to give away the secret—it’s the power of positive thinking, manifesting what you want through thought. I was like, “Dude, any of us could have said that and made eight million dollars on our terrible book.” But, I think of Rel’s character, and I think, to some degree, everyone has the secret down.

Noralil: It’s really cool that you know your concern is with identity and the way that differences are perceived by the individual and by society...Now that you mention that, I can see that in every single one of your shorts. The only short, for me, that falls out of that landscape a bit is Zooquarium...I was hoping you could talk to me a bit about where that short came from.

Lena: Firstly, I just saw that place. It’s at our college pool. My mom did a lot of underwater photography, and so I’ve always been really attracted to it. So, in this space where you can just watch the swimmers in the pool, I was like, “This is one of the most unbelievable things I’ve ever seen.” My friend Marisa, who’s the girl in the short, was pointing people out as they dove in, and I just thought, “Oh, my god, this is like watching a little girl at the zoo, but she’s a little people watcher.”

Then my fantasy life took off, and the only thought I had was, “This is my own ridiculous, oblique way of addressing my totally neurotic and not at all scientifically based fears about climate change.” I know that sounds ridiculous. I don’t know very much about global warming, but I just finished a class that left me more neurotic than ever. I’m convinced that my house is going to be flooded at any minute. That was my ridiculous way of being like, “Everything is going to be so different and sci-fi soon.” So sometimes when I talk about that short I get embarrassed, just because I feel like there was a certain heavy-handedness in my way of thinking about it.

Noralil: I don’t think the heavy-handedness comes across.

Lena: I’m so glad to hear that because I was like, “If anybody ever finds out I was thinking about global warming, I’ll kill myself.” Now I’ve let the secret out.

Noralil: So funny.

Lena: That was a total departure. I found (the actors) performances to be so innocent and timeless, and the fact that we decided to do the wearing all white, they became these archetypal people on a date.

Noralil: The other strange message that I read into the short was the idea that when people are in a relationship, it’s very easy to look out at other relationships and people’s lives, and in that observation, to really make them others, to judge what’s happening to other people from this place of safety. It was funny for me, that it mirrored the same way we’re able to look at other cultures and make judgment calls about what they are like.

Then, on top of that, we’re watching this couple, watching others. Because of that, there is that question of, “Are we judging them as they judge someone else?”

Lena: Totally. Also, when you’re in a relationship, you’re in this weird, little club where you’re like, “Oh, my god, everyone is so weird,” which has totally befallen me at various times, where I’m like, “Why is everyone besides my boyfriend so weird?”

Noralil: (laughing) Then you wake up one day and realize, “Oh, my, I’m the weird one! How’d that happen?”

Lena: Totally, and you spend the rest of your adult life reckoning with that fact.

Noralil: Then in brief illuminant moments you feel as if, “Ha! I am normal,” although you realize shortly after that you’re just lying to yourself all over again.

Lena: Exactly, it’s so back and forth.

I’m so glad you got something out of that. I’ve been self-conscious about Zooquarium before. I’m so glad it’s something you were able to read things into, besides our upcoming global climate crisis.

Noralil: I also really love Making Sense. I thought it was terrific, audacious and strange, and along with The Fountain and Open the Door played with the idea of the prank. But, the really funny part of the prank aspect here is that it turns inward; it becomes a prank on the self. So, I was hoping you could talk a bit about that piece.

Lena: (Josh Safdie and I) had been at Slamdance, and I made this joke about how I was going to sell him a dollar for fifty cents. It was a totally ridiculous joke I made. I was like, “Want this dollar?” He was like, “Uh...” “You just have to pay me fifty cents.” It was something I thought about writing a play about in seventh grade, so it was my little joke I’d been saving up. And, Josh was like, “Oh, my god, we have to do that for real!” I was kind of like, “Are you crazy?”

He totally orchestrated it. I went to his studio one day, and we built those change boxes. He was so serious about it that I was like, “I can’t help but just follow you on this mission.” He was so gutsy. I consider myself a pretty out there person, but I was so scared to approach these people, and Josh—I just could not believe what he was doing. He was walking up to homeless men. People loved him and responded to him so well, but I was just so shocked.

Then, when we looked at the footage, I was just like, “This is kind of unbelievable, that we actually went out and did this.” That was an amazing experience, and also, I think that seeing Josh act that way gave me the guts to do a lot of things on camera that I didn’t imagine I would do.

Noralil: What examples can you give me?

Lena: The Fountain was totally Josh-inspired. Josh is such a character who’ll do pratfalls, fall on the ground at a film festival Q&A for fun; he just does what amuses him. That’s something I don’t know if I’ll ever become completely because I’ve too much of an adolescent girl in me, but I find it so inspiring.

Noralil: So there will be no pratfalls out of you.

Lena: No pratfalls from me. It’s funny, the second day I met Josh I was at a festival Q&A, and he pretended to fall on his way up to the podium. I was like, “What happened?!?” Brett was like, “Don’t worry. He does this all the time.”

Noralil: (laughs) There’s definitely balliness in The Fountain. I love that your boyfriend comes up at the end and is like, “You just like being half naked in front of people. I don’t know if I can negotiate that in my head.”

Lena: (laughs) I know!

We were actually planning to have him play the person who told me to get out of the fountain, and then the real security guard came. We were like, “Oh, my god, nothing better could have happened,” since the real security guard came over and was just like , “Please get out of the fountain.”

I run into that security guard all the time, and I always feel a little bit sheepish.

So then Ethan had this very honest reaction, which was, “I can’t believe my girlfriend made me come to the fountain,”—he works at the college; he’s graduated already—so, he’s like, “I can’t believe I’m at my place of work, my girlfriend is naked in this fountain, I had to assist her out of the fountain and make sure that she didn’t get arrested by campus security.” I think he was just boggled that he’d ended up there.

Noralil: A question I’m always asking [when I see pieces like this is]: Have people, because of the digital age, become more performative in everyday life? We’ve always had some form of that performance—vaudeville, opera. Humans are extremists. We are all extremists. I think the digital age has just become a new way for us to explore and embrace the extremity.

Lena: I think so too. Watching the final episode of Four-Eyed Monsters, I was so emotional, and then I realized, “You are essentially filming your break-up.”...The idea of people having these emotions that I find so affecting, but then I realize that there’s this shield between them and what they’re feeling in the form of the camera, in the form of playing for the camera, it’s troubling in some ways and definitely complicated.

Noralil: I was talking to one of my uncles this morning about objectivity, and he was trying to convince me that there is an objective reality in so much as there are definitives in time and matter. He’s a very religious man, and so I shot back to him that I found it interesting a religious man would consider matter objective. What this gets into is the fact that I do not believe there’s an objective reality at all.

Lena: I feel the same way.

Noralil: So when an interviewer comes to you looking at Tight Shots, looking at Creative Nonfiction and says, “Oh, your aesthetic is one of reality,” I think there’s something strange about that, like—

Lena: How are you defining reality? Maybe my aesthetic is my reality, but I don’t even know if I’m depicting that accurately because I’m going through this process which really distances me from it in a lot of ways.

Noralil: Exactly.

Lena: It’s really complicated. For me it can be troubling because I’ll think, “I’m trying to do this thing which is honest and cathartic for me, but after the whole process am I farther from it or closer to it?”

Noralil: In the end, is what you’ve made only an approximation of what you originally saw, or is it what you saw?

Lena: And, what was the purest experience, having the experience, writing about the experience? It’s layer upon layer.

Noralil: There are so many issues when it comes to art and to life, and I think embracing everything as subjective is really important.

Lena: I think so to.

Noralil: Maybe you can’t embrace everything as equal. Maybe that’s not possible with art, but maybe you can embrace it as legitimate.

Lena: These are the questions where I’m like, “That is so big for me.” My boyfriend is so into philosophy and thinks about it so much, and sometimes I’ll be like, “Philosophy is not my thing.” Then I realize philosophy is kind of the only thing.

Lena went on to premiere Creative Nonfiction at the 2009 South By Southwest Festival and then shared Tiny Furniture at the fest in 2010. In 2012, HBO premiered Lena's series Girls, which has earned multiple Emmy Awards nominations. You can follow Lena on Twitter at @lenadunham.



