Kevin Robinson:  This is your directorial debut, how does it feel?

Akira Boch:  It’s both exciting and nerve wracking.  I’ve made a lot of shorts, music videos, documentaries in the past, but this is my first feature. I’m really nervous and excited to see how it all turns out.

KR:  You decided to come out with a film about an Asian American rock band for your debut, why?

AB:  I used to play in garage bands when I was in my late teens and earlier twenties and that’s the kind of music that we played.  Honestly, we didn’t intend for the cast to be completely Asian American and it’s not.  Our two leads happen to be Asian American. Katie Hipol is part Filipina and Teresa Michelle Lee is Vietnamese American. Our casting call was open, but we did specify that we wanted people of color to come in and audition.

KR:  The main characters are also female, was that a conscious choice?

AB:  Casting females was a conscious choice.  I did that for a couple reasons.  Some of my favorite bands that are out there right now are led by females.  I also think there’s a severe lack of representation and roles for women in films.

KR:  Why did you decide to become a filmmaker?

AB:  I grew up making films.  When I was a teenager, I was lucky enough to grow up next to a theater.  The director of this theater was named Luis Valdez.  He directed the films Zoot Suit and La Bamba.  I happened to be the same age as his eldest son.  Us kids would get together on the weekends and make our own short films and music videos.

KR:  What is it about filmmaking that appeals to you?

AB:  I have to say that everything about filmmaking appeals to me, at least  initially. Once you get deeper into it, it becomes a very difficult task at times.   But, there’s this certain passion or maybe addiction or something, to the process that I just love and I haven’t really been able to get over or quit, so I just keep doing it.

KR:  What do you think about “whitewashing” in Hollywood?

AB:  That’s one of my pet peeves.  I’m extremely annoyed by it and I never go out and support those films.  Essentially it’s a misrepresentation of the source material.  They don’t believe that people of color can be marketed to the middle of America or to the rest of the world.  It gives everybody this false impression of what America and it’s diversity is like.

KR:  What do you hope people take away from The Crumbles?

AB:  I really just wanted to tell a story about these everyday characters that we know, that we’re friends with and put them in a story that’s compelling enough to watch, so that the audience forgets that they are people of color and just treats them as the interesting characters that they are.

Chastity Vicencio: This is a very unique film that crosses genres and doesn’t follow any specific formula. What did you set out to make when you started creating this film?

Joseph Kahn: I wanted to make a new high school movie for the new generation…and I literally mean what I say. I believe that today’s generation deserves better. They only get reboots, remakes, sequels, and stories that have been told a million times over. And, you know what? This generation deserves better, because they’re a better generation. They’re way better than my generation. This is the least racist, least sexist, least homophobic, most progressive group of kids ever to walk the planet and we treat them like that? It’s a shame.

 CV: This movie is very fast-paced and in touch with today’s youth. But there’s also a lot of nostalgia in it, there’s a lot of 90′s references. So what were your biggest influences for making this movie?

JK: There’s a lot of John Hughes in here. He’s kind of like our template. Which is funny because it’s being sold as a horror comedy, but ultimately the engine driving it is essentially John Hughes. But then it moves on. There’s Tim Burton, there’s David Cronenburg, There’s Wes Craven. There’s Dirty Dancing. There’s Kung Fu flicks. There are a million references. It’s basically the entire totality of the pop universe is in this movie.

CV: How did Dane Cook and Josh Hutcherson get involved?

JK: Josh Hutcherson was at my agency, and I needed a young star in it. He wasn’t quite “Peeta” (of The Hunger Games) then. But once I got a hold of him, I just knew he was going to blow up. So that was a no-brainer. Dane Cook I had worked with before, and actually put him in Torque, and he was an unknown entity then. And I asked him for a favor on this one. But he gladly did it. He relished the idea of going against his type, his archetype, and do something different.

CV: You not only directed, but also co-wrote and financed this movie. How was it to have that much creative control on your second film?

JK: Fantastic. (Laughs) There is nothing better than to be able to walk on set, and know that you don’t have to answer to anyone except your bank account.

CV: How was this experience compared to making your first film, Torque?

JK: It was radically different. Torque, uh, every time I made a decision it would get questioned. Literally, on a daily basis, almost sometimes by the hour, right? And what was useful about it was, it was film school. I learned how they made movies, and it was almost like I was a spy. I got in there, and I learned how to engineer every little section. I learned how they did production, I learned what departments did what, I learned what their function was, I learned how they did the post-production. And so when I finally did Detention, I just reverse engineered the process that the studio did, and found a way to make it more efficient. But Detention is made like a studio movie essentially, only I paid for it.

CV: What do you hope that teens will take away from watching Detention?

JK: The biggest reason I made Detention a multi-genre flick is because people say that high school is a genre. High school is not a genre, high school is a location. You know, it’s a location that’s a microcosm of life. Genre is a perspective of life with a set of rules. And in high school, genres are everywhere. Like, you could have… one person could be living in a horror film, one person could be living in a romantic comedy, another person could be living in a sexcapade.

What I did is I took every genre, mixed them together, and created the totality of high school. When you look at it, every kid is in their own genre. And during this movie, they’re all trapped essentially in their own detentions in their own genres. And the audience, by the way, sees these archetypes too. We come in it with our own perspectives, like, “a bully is like this”, you know, and “a Goth girl is like this”, and “a cheerleader should be like this”. But as you know when you watch the movie, by the end of it, everybody has a secret. Everybody has a flip.

And that’s one of the things you learn about high school. You start off in your own clique, but by the time you graduate high school, you should be able to have a bit of empathy. That by seeing that everybody else has their own story, and it’s not quite how you imagined it, they see you. And by that point, when you have the empathy with other people, that maybe are nothing like you, you have truly graduated high school. If all you did was graduate high school with good grades, but zero empathy for someone else, you have failed high school. So that’s one of the biggest lessons of this movie. That these people are fighting within their genres to seek each other out, and then they move on.

CV: What is next for you?

JK: I’ve been doing a lot of work in China for commercials. So I am booked on a LeBron James Sprite commercial. So off I go.

Sophia Stein: What was your inspiration for “I Am A Ghost”?

H.P. Mendoza: If I can go on a really, really subcutaneous level, I’ll say I just have a love for horror movies, and specifically I have a love for late 60’s, early 70’s horror movies. “The Haunting” by Robert Wise is one of my favorite haunted house films, and then even the cheesy ones that came after that, like “The Legend of Hell House,” which is based on the same novel, but it is so cheesy. It was in color, and because it was in color, “Let’s show blood!” It was really campy, but I still loved it. I ate that stuff up! And what I ate up the most was when people started taking risks with horror. This may be standard now, but “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” was pretty innovative. Its funny when you watch these movies and think, why is it on the cheaper filmstock? Well, who is going to fund a risky horror movie like that in 1975. So there are a lot of these horror movies from that era that I really like.

SS: Is Sci-Fi another genre that you are interested in exploring?

HM: I’m really into Sci-Fi. If you look at all the dialogue in a row, “I Am A Ghost” reads like sci-fi, even though, it’s about a ghost. Once you make the story from the point of view of a ghost, it becomes Sci-Fi; but, once you ignore the fact that she is a ghost, and you see a woman in terror being haunted by something else, it goes back to being horror.  Another thing that really haunted me was “Picnic at Hanging Rock.“ I really wanted to have that look. I wanted one of the Hanging Rock girls to be in the movie, so I was really specific about the dress and the look. I really liked the idea of having a Victorian movie with 70’s hair. It was like a little in-joke there. That’s why Emily has that kind of 70’s hair, and that’s not Victorian at all. I really wanted that look.

SS: I read that a conversation you had with Christian Cagagical, the magician, helped to crystalize your concept for “I Am A Ghost.” How old were you when you had that conversation and what were the circumstances under which you met him?

HM: Cagagical is a magician and has a huge, dark magic cult following; he’s really kind of subversive that way; he’s not like doves and stuff. Cagagical used to do the ghost tours in San Francisco. We’re old friends; we did lots of theatre together. I’m actually finishing up a documentary about him that will be done sometime this year. Anyway, we were both about twenty-two, it was a very long time ago, when we just randomly started talking about the ghost stories he would be telling on the ghost tour. And I said, “how do you feel about these stories, some of them sound a bit stock?” And he said, “they’re stock because some of them are based on other stories … but you have to admit that there is something interesting about the fact that these stories all have a lot of other connections. Whether you believe in [ghosts] or not, how can people in Guatemala have the exact same story as someone in Japan? It’s a lake and a woman who drowned her kids. That whole story exists in a lot of different cultures.” From there, we launched into this whole thing about imprints in time. I thought, wow, how interesting, imprints in time, that’s like watching a world made of DV tapes, and as you pass by, you hit play, and there is a ghost of something that happened at one time. That’s really neat. Now if I turn that into a movie, it wouldn’t feel like horror, it becomes Sci-Fi, because these things that are walking through time, they’re not real people. And I thought, how could I make it so that they are real? For years I thought I have to try and turn that into a film somehow. Later, I remember telling Christian, “I want to turn that into a film.” I hadn’t written the script, but it was all in my head, and I recited to him how the movie would go from beginning to end. He said, “It sounds great … you know, that’s not really mainstream.” And I said, “I know, but it has to be this way.” Yeah, it never changed from that point on. The movie, as it is now, is exactly as I recited it to him all those years ago.

SS: You are acknowledging that the film is not a mainstream film. What’s your distribution plan?

HM: I want to talk to a couple of different distributors specializing in weird horror. I’m lucky that I decided to make a horror film because I think that it is easier to distribute than my previous film which was an Asian American musical. People kept saying, “yeah, this would be great if it weren’t a musical,” or “this would be great if there weren’t any Asians”.

SS: Are there particular experimental filmmakers or works that have influenced you?

HM: So I know everyone says David Lynch when they see this movie, I am really flattered by that, but, really, my main influence would be Stan Brakhage. The first twenty minutes of “I Am A Ghost” is all 10-mm wide, but then the second dialogue-free section with all the hand-held work, that’s like “Window Water Baby Moving,” that’s like “Cat’s Cradle,” ”The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes.” Those are my homages to Brakhage, because when I watch a Brakhage film I feel like I am watching a haunting — especially when I’m watching the birth of his son, that’s my favorite of his films. First of all, that’s super bold. “Oh, I’m going to pop in a film from the 50’s of an actual birth,” that’s amazing. And I don’t know if you feel this way, but I’m thinking, where is that baby now? He was probably a baby-boomer. He’s probably like sixty-eight at this point. I see those [films], and I see moments of real life captured in time. I think his work is the most haunting I’ve ever seen.

SS: What challenges do you feel inspired to tackle in the industry?

HM: Making one (a film) is a challenge enough. You know, as far as those industry challenges that are all out there – I’m becoming less and less interested in them. I don’t want to break through that ceiling anymore. And you know why? Because I have stories that I want to tell. And I know a lot of people who are in my shoes — I really think that I am the bottom rung. “I Am A Ghost” is such a cheaply made movie, like a self-funded, that is so independent. Actually if I could live the rest of my life making movies like that, I would be a happy man! I don’t see myself being as miserable as a lot of my cohorts, saying “I like my movie, I spent a lot of my time on this movie, but damn, I wish Paramount would have produced it.” And I keep thinking, that’s a really unhealthy way to think! Do you really think, “Mister Asian filmmaker”, that if Paramount produced your film that Paramount wouldn’t have a say over what the story was? Do you think you would have had an Asian lead? So those challenges don’t interest me as much any more because I am realizing what the pluses are of the way I am doing it.

SS: In addition to having “I Am A Ghost” in this year’s San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, you wrote the screenplay for “Yes, We Are Open.” How did that collaboration come about?

HM: Richard Wong directed “Colma: the Musical,” for which I wrote the script and the music. He directed another one called “Option Three,” that we wrote together. “Yes, We Are Open,” was a script that I wrote originally with two gay leads in mind. I’ll be honest with you, it was autobiographical. I wanted to write a wacky story. Of course, the script is way exaggerated, nothing that dramatic happened in my life. I thought it would be great to do a really honest story about really neurotic sexual conversations, because sexual conversation are weird. Even “The Proposal,” “The After,” it’s weird! Everyone knows the social norms of conversation, and sex breaks it all. I talked about it with Rich. And, you know, the truth is, if you want a movie about open relationships to be fresh and new, don’t make it gay. I love writing gay scripts, but I thought about it and there are so many movies already about that. If I were to tell you right now the first movie off the top of my head that is about open relationships that are heterosexual — “Bob and Ted and Carol and Alice,” that was 1969?! So I said Rich, “Read this.” And next thing you know, he’s doing it, and we’re both premiering here, back to back.

SS: What are some future challenges you feel inspired to tackle?

HM: I’m writing a script right now called, “A Man Called Apocalypse,” that deals with the Book of Revelations, but told in the form of a cowboy story in the modern day. I thought to myself, how cool would that be, so my idea is to have this really ghetto Filipino guy meet with John Wayne and imagine what happens if they try to tackle the Apocalypse according to the Book of Revelations. The one that I’m working on next is something that I’ve had for years called “Bittermelon.” Bittermelon is a squash, it’s the most bitter thing you can ever eat, and I hate it. My family forced me to eat it growing up, and all my friends had it forced on them. It’s framed like your typical Christmas movie. It’s about a really big Filipino family coming back for Christmas in one house. It’s a comedy of errors that slowly turns into a murder mystery. And then not a mystery, because you realize what the whole Christmas dinner was for the entire family to conspire to kill one person. So all of a sudden, it’s not a mystery anymore. And believe me, it’s a comedy, but it will be really dark and gory.

Writer/producer/star Kimberly-Rose Wolter sat down with Sophia Stein while taking part in the recent 30th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival.

Sophia Stein:  You refer to “Knots” as an UN-romantic comedy, what do you mean by that?

Kimberly-Rose Wolter:  “Knots” is a quirky film.  It is not what you think of when you think of a traditional romantic comedy.  My character, Lilly, is fighting against marriage, so she is actually an “UN–romantic” lead.

SS:  What was the inspiration for the story?

KW:  I was in post (production) for my first feature, “Tre,” which was much darker, a much more angsty story.  I wanted to work on something that was funny.  I was missing home, and I wanted to get paid to go back  home.  I was longing to be back in Hawaii.  I wanted to use the island in a really beautiful way, because it doesn’t make sense to go to Hawaii and film in a studio or in a kitchen.  And so I thought if I am going to get funding and have to shoot it outside, let’s have weddings because people are always coming here to do weddings.  The story was not based on my own experience:  my mom is not a wedding planner, and I don’t have sisters, and I never went back to Hawaii to track down an ex-boyfriend, so this is not my life story.  (laughs) Although, I am totally afraid of marriage … So, it was more this back-ended way.

SS:  Hawaii is one of the main characters in “Knots” — what in particular were you interested in illuminating about Hawaii?

KW:  I was born and raised in Hawaii, so it has always been a part of my life.  People are always asking me, “What it is really like to grow up there?,” “Do people really wear coconut bras?,”  “Are there really volcano’s exploding all the time?,” “Is life easier in Hawaii?”  It is so beautiful there, nature is interwoven into your tapestry.  But people living in Hawaii have the same problems and issues as people living in California or Wyoming.  Just because it happens in Hawaii, doesn’t make it better.

SS:  Your film came out in a year that another film was lauded for showing Hawaii’s true face – “The Descendants.”  What did you think of “The Descendants”?

KW:  I really enjoyed it.  I read the spectacular novel by Kaui Hemmings.  She focuses on a very specific community, this upper-crust Haole community in Kahala, probably, or Lanikai, that whole yacht club scene is so there.  So it is fascinating to delve into such a specific story.  The relationship stuff is heart-breaking.  I was missing a little bit of the true populous of Hawaii in that film.  But, you know, it’s a Hollywood film, and I think George Clooney did a great job.  I just would have liked to have seen more ethnic mixes in the casting.  Hawaii is not all Caucasian.  In fact, Caucasians are the minority there.  Hawaii is a place that is predominantly Asian, and I would have liked to have seen Polynesian people in “The Descendants.”

SS:  You wrote, produced, and starred in “Knots;” what is your favorite part of the process?

KW:  I really love the writing.  To create characters, and then all of a sudden, they are creating themselves, landing in really fun scenarios.  Experiencing something or questioning something, and using that as a seed to jump off into a scene, that’s really fun.  The writing projects that I have done, I have had the pleasure to write as specs.  So nobody is telling me what to write; I just get to write what I want.  I really like the acting too … but it’s such a small part of making a film.  When you’re involved with a film from the beginning to the end, the acting is such a small sliver, that it’s tough just to hold onto that.

SS:  Which is the most challenging aspect for you?

KW:  The producing — the one I didn’t say was one of my favorites!  Because you are wearing so many hats.  You’re trying to make sure that everybody is playing in the sandbox well together.  You are also trying to make sure that they are trying to create the best looking sandcastle – but be true to the integrity of the piece.  Film is highly collaborative, and if you’re someone who is not collaborative, this is totally, completely the wrong field for you.  The job of the producer is to make sure that everybody’s needs are being met, but that at the same time nobody is stomping on other peoples’ needs … And trying to make something at the same time! — it’s not just HR, if you know what I mean.

SS:  Do you see yourself as primarily a comedic actress or a dramatic actress?

KW:  I think I’m moving more into comedy.  I’m definitely quirky.  I feel like — and this may be a bit presumptuous, I’m not saying I am, but I feel like — a little, weird, female Woody Allen!  I feel very quirky, very out-of-place.  In “Knots,” I feel like sometimes that I am playing the Alice in Wonderland.  There are weird things happening, and sometimes I am the quirky person, and sometimes I am the straight person in the middle of the Wonderland.

SS:  The production values overall are very high – how did you achieve such a polished look with such a limited budget?

KW:  We had an amazing crew, an amazing director.  I don’t know if people realize, but it’s a Hawaii-based crew.  We didn’t fly anybody out from LA except the director and myself and some of the actors.  The crew was based in Hawaii.  The shooting schedule for the entire film was ten days, which was pretty insane.  We were shooting ten pages a day; I think our last day we shot thirteen pages?  We were moving like crazy, from different locations, across town.  We couldn’t have done it without the crew.

SS:  How did you connect up with Michael Kang to direct “Knots”?

KW:  I had “The Motel,” which he had done, in my Netflix cue and happened to be watching it right around that time.  His use of the motel as a character was similar to how I felt about Hawaii in “Knots.”  The way he tells this universal story of a quirky, fringe community — it just blew me away!  And I thought — Ok, great, I know who is going to direct my movie! I don’t know him at all? So now I have to go and make friends.  I went on Facebook, as you do, and figured out who our mutual friends were, and thank-God one of them was a very close friend of mine, and so I called her up and said, “Can you please do an email intro?,” and she did, and that was it.

SS: And casting was similar?

KW:  We used a casting director in Hawaii and in LA.  We went through the normal casting routine for the most part.  Illeana Douglas was actually Mike’s idea; he also Facebook-ed her.

SS:  You have an impressive roster of musicians who contributed to your score.

KW:  I always knew that I wanted to use local music.  Hawaii has its own music scene.   It’s isolated.  But the music is something that is so unique, so beautiful, and so strong in the community, that to go anywhere else outside of the community, I thought, would be ridiculous and counterproductive to the actual story.  So we really made an effort.   We wanted an authentic feel, and I thought of Jake Shimabukuro because he is a legend in the ukulele community.  I tossed the idea out, and they said, “well he’s not a composer,” and I looked him up, and he had done two films, and one of them was with Mike’s friend, so we got into contact with Jake.  We met with him in Hawaii, and he was really nice.  He and Woody Pak — who did the other part of our sound, who is also from Hawaii but now lives in LA — it was something to behold, truly amazing.

SS:   What kind of reception have you gotten from the Asian community?

KW:  The Asian community has been so supportive of the film and the work that I’ve done.  The Asian community embraces stories about Hawaii and seeing that point of view and perspective.  I’m so fortunate and very thankful to be part of such a great community.

SS:  How does being hapa relate to your casting in Hollywood?

KW:  I live in Hollywood, and I work in Hollywood, but I am not part of the studio system.  I’ve gone into auditions and they say, “You’re not quite white?”  And then I’ve also gone out for an Asian role, and I get there and the casting director is like, “Why is the white girl here?”  So you fall into “the grey area,” for sure.  But honestly, I am sort-of outside of the studio system, so I couldn’t say for certain.  I’ve been able to have a career that’s outside just by virtue of not having representation.  I had a really great theatrical rep, and then I got pregnant, and then I haven’t had one since.  And I don’t have literary representation. So I’m of the mindset, you just keep going.  I have been working, and I have been busy.  Yes, I would love to have a rep, but I’m not going to put my career on hold until I find one.

SS:  What’s next for you?

KW:  I am writing my third feature.  It’s a comedy, and it’s called, “My Grandmother Hates Me.”  I’m not planning on being in the film at all.  I’d like to get it sold and get it out there.  I would love to sell it and have somebody else produce it!  To see something big come out of something that I’ve realized, where I am not the only one working on the project the entire way through.  I would absolutely be o.k. with that.

If you haven’t heard by now, the heroine (in the Hunger Games books by Suzanne Collins) Katniss Everdeen, is described as having jet-black hair, olive skin, and gray eyes.  Fair enough.  However, when it was announced that a film version was being made, a casting call went out to Caucasian actresses only.  Why?  A quick look for the definition of “olive skin” on Wikipedia defines olive skin as “a skin color range of some indigenous individuals who are from the Mediterranean and some other parts of Europe, Middle East, and regions of South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central Asia”.  The actor chosen to portray Katniss was Jennifer Lawrence, a fine young talent, but nowhere near what you would think of someone with the attributes in the source material to look like.

It should be pointed out that this is not the first time that Hollywood has done this.  It’s called “whitewashing” and most recently the same practice was used for the film The Last Airbender and rumor has it that the live action version of the anime classic Akira will undergo the same treatment.  Throughout the history of the industry white actors have been cast in roles of color, thus changing the perception the audience has of these characters, but ultimately taking jobs from actors already struggling to make it in the movies.

The 2010 U.S. Census shows that the fastest growing ethnic groups are Hispanic and Asian.  Unless you are blind, you can see all different ethnicities, mixed race, biracial, multiracial people walking around. If films based in the future really want to be authentic, they should reflect how the population most likely will look.  The most recent films to achieve this, were The Matrix films over a decade ago.  Other than two minor black characters, The Hunger Games is all white.   Does that mean in the future people of color don’t exist?  In Hollywood the answer is yes.

Sophia Stein:  “Boy” is the top grossing, local New Zealand film of all time.

Taika Waititi:  Yeah, I don’t know how that happened!  Wasn’t even meant to happen, that was a mistake.  Obviously you want your film to do well when you make one, and you want people to see it.  Hopefully people don’t make films thinking, oh, I want to break records and I want to make all this money, and I want it to be a box office smash hit.  Having said that, I was really pleased when it did happen.

SS:   To what do you attribute the mass appeal of this story?

TW:  I just think the film was really good, and I feel like people really appreciated that.  It spoke to them because it was set in a time that a lot of people could identify with.  It was also about kids, so modern kids could get it and identify with that.  A lot of the older generation got it as well because it was a story about their children.  The older generation knew the Alamein character — they were like, “that’s my son, he became the idiot,” and “those are my grandkids!”  So I think there was something for everybody.  Also, because it was a lighter approach to a serious topic — this idea of families and the disconnects within families, it was approaching that and not hammering people over the head by saying, “we’re terrible parents,” and depressing people about it. 

SS:  Waihau Bay is the location for Boy.  Can you talk about your connection to that particular place?

TW:  Well, that’s where I was raised.  I grew up in the town that we shot the film.  We shot in my grandmother’s house, and I went to that school that the kids went to, and most of my family were involved in the film.  It’s a very small community of about two- or three-hundred people, and I’m related to most of them,  so it’s a very personal film in that sense.  But it’s not autobiographical — because the story is made up.  But it’s personal in that that’s how I grew up.  And I tried to keep it as authentic to that upbringing and to that time, as possible. 

SS:  You paint this picture of a “small town, run by children,” in a world where the narcissistic adults are oblivious to nurturing the “potential” of their children.  Versus today, where parents obsessively attempt to manage every aspect of their children’s lives –

TW:  Oh, God, it’s awful, isn’t it?  If you have kids, you have to organize a play date – “oh, you’ve got play date from 3:00-4:00 pm, and you’re going to go and visit this friend” –- scheduling children’s lives, it’s just the worst.  I’m going to be a parent in May, and I am not going to let my kid just do anything, I am going to be strict but …  I loved growing up in a time where you went back home when it got dark.  And parents were like, “I don’t want to see you until nighttime.”  I appreciated that because it’s putting trust in the child to look after themselves.  Kids hang out with a bunch of kids, and you all look out for each other.  I feel that teaches you independence and social skills in a much more effective way than a parent always being there to guide and hold someone’s hand.

SS:  Sometimes you credit yourself with your father’s surname, “Waititi”, and sometimes you use your mother’s, “Cohen”.  What is that about?

TW:  It’s just tax purposes (laughs). It’s really because both my parents are in the arts.  My mother is a writer and a schoolteacher; my father is a painter.  Growing up I was doing a lot of acting and stuff.  And because Cohen is on my passport, I would use Cohen through school, and I was known as Taika Cohen.  And then, when I went to live with my dad on that side of the family, I was known as Waititi.  So I always used both names throughout my life according to where I was living.  As a painter, I often felt like that was more the Waititi side of myself; I would be Taika Waititi the painter.  And then, because I made my first short film in that area where I was known as Waititi, that was the name that was put on the film.  And that film did really well and suddenly I had a career as a filmmaker, and now everyone knows me as Waititi.

SS:  You made a short film about Maori soldiers in Italy during WWII, do you have any desire to make that into a feature?

TW:  Yeah, I’m trying to write that into a feature.  That film is called Tama Tu and it was about the Maori battalion in World War II, which is very famous in New Zealand.  Again, I would mix comedy with the drama to make a sort-of comic look at the horrors of war.

SS:  What do you hope people get out of Boy?

TW:  Well, the first thing I want people to take away from this film is a ticket stub! And the second thing I want is for people to take away the experience of having gone to somewhere that they might physically never get to, because it’s a very remote part of New Zealand, and it’s a very special place that has never been on film before.  The experience of journeying to this place, in a time that is now gone.  In the eighties, where things were very different.  But also seeing a very human story that reaffirms that we’re all the same – no matter where you are from, the idea of family and of parents and of children and the way that they try and connect, and the way that families circle around each other and orbit each other, and the great distances between these people who are supposed to be very close — that is actually relatable to most people in the world.

Kevin Robinson  This film is a re-imagining of La Casa Muda, why choose it as the basis for this project?

Laura Lau  We found out it was a story told in one continuous shot and we thought that sounded really interesting.  It’s really different and you don’t really get a chance to do something different from a cinema perspective very often.  There hasn’t been a mainstream  movie (using this technique) since Hitchcock’s Rope, which is like 1948. And then for me it was all about the story and the character and how to bring this woman’s experience to the viewer and how the continuous shot would allow me to do that.

KR Are you a fan of horror films?

LL I’m not, actually.  I like movies of all genres, but I can’t say that I’m a particular fan of horror.

KR What’s your relationship with your filmmaking partner Chris Kentis?

LL We’re married.  We’ve been working together for a long time, this is a third feature together.

KR Why do you think the collaboration works?

LL I think you have to be on the same page on the kind of movie you want to make. I think it’s about communication and having learned to articulate what each person thinks and how to discuss things in a productive way. Of course we bring different strengths.

KR How did you decide on Elizabeth Olsen for the lead role of Sarah?

LL We had casting directors that had cast Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone the year before and as soon as they read the script, they said they knew who Sarah is.  At that time she was completely unknown and we needed somebody really special to carry this movie.  We needed somebody who we felt had that charisma and luminosity and emotional depth.  She had everything.

KR What do you like about filmmaking?

LL Filmmaking is such a fascinating process.  You cross so many different artforms from the visuals to music to sound to writing.  It challenges every single part of myself. It’s a privilege to bring my reality, what it is I want to say, out to other people.  And it’s a responsibility.

KR Why did you decide to be a filmmaker?

LL I debated between actually becoming a doctor or maybe even a psychotherapist than being a filmmaker.  My motivation has always been to try to contribute something.  As a filmmaker I felt that I would be able to reach more people.   Even though I had studied writing in college, I ended going toward producing, which I think is very typical of females by the way.  It’s taken me a lot of time to develop the confidence to actually allow myself to express my creativity.

KR Let’s talk about responsibility, and being a woman, and producing.  The Academy Awards were just handed out a couple weeks ago.  There were no women or directors of color nominated.  What are your thoughts on that and the industry in general?

LL Historically the way women have been represented has been in front of the camera, as spectacle for males and for the male gaze.  One of the things that bothers me about the way women are portrayed in film frequently is they’re crazy or jealous.  There’s a femme fatale who is going to get the man in trouble.  It’s an Adam & Eve story. So it makes sense so now, it’s not so simple to be behind the camera when we’ve been conditioned to be in front of it.  It proves and replicates the history of power between men and women.

KR Without giving too much away, what do you hope audiences will get from watching Silent House?

LL Well, I hope a couple things.  First of all, that they have an experience that they feel is a little different from something they’ve seen before, and something that they’ll have to think about afterwards.  It’s really about a traumatized mind.

Sophia Stein:   You are a quadruple threat:  Writer, producer, director, and star.  Which is your favorite hat to wear?

Jennifer Westfeldt:  Well, I only grew up being an actor, that’s all I really knew about or wanted to do.  And specifically, on stage, that was really where I thought my life would go.  So everything else has been a real surprise to me, and a real, kind-of stumbling into this indie film habit.  It’s a strange piece of my life as an artist that’s evolved, and kind-of in some ways, happened to me.  And then I guess I couldn’t get enough, so I kept doing it, sort of on the side of my acting projects.  So it’s been an interesting challenge, and it’s been exciting as a woman, to at least have one aspect of my career be something that I can shape a little, in terms of working on stories and themes and ideas that interest me, and reflect the age I’m at right now, or the things that I am thinking about.  So [filmmaking] has been a nice way to augment my acting career.

SS:   So which of the hats is the most difficult for you or challenging?

JW:  You know, I had never intended to direct this.  It was not in our thinking whatsoever.  We were talking to a number of directors.  Jake Kasdan, who ends up being a producer on this project was going to direct it for a time.    So really, with his prodding and with the support of my other producing partners, it sort of fell to me — or else we wouldn’t have been able to  make the film.  So I kinda took a deep breath and steeled myself, and I realized it was going to be a really sharp learning curve.  Jake ended up being on set everyday, watching at the monitor every time I was on camera.  My DP, Will Rexer, was sooo generous with his time.  We spent so much time in pre-production talking through every shot, every moment, every visual reference.  He filled in my gaps and helped me speak about things in a way the crew would respond to, rather than just in a way that I would speak about it as an artist.  I felt like I got this incredible group of people to support what was a first-time [directing] effort, and one that I wasn’t entirely sure at the outset I could pull off.

SS:  So now that you’ve been bitten by the directing bug, would you direct yourself again?

JW:  I don’t know.  Not for a while … You’ve gotta be a little crazy, you have to have a few screws loose to do this many jobs on something!  But at a certain point you get so invested in seeing something through, you’re working so hard, and a number of people are working so hard, that to not see it to fruition, to not see it get made, feels like the worst possible fate.  So you kind-of get to a point where you would do anything to make it!  … to make it the way we want, with the actors that we want.

SS:  How do you finance a film like this?  I noticed that Mike Nichols is one of your executive producers.

JW:  Well, Mike was involved early.  We did a workshop of the screenplay with some actors at New York Stage and Film, this wonderful company on the Vassar campus in the summer, and Mike was one of the screenwriting mentors.  So we started with this cold reading, and he, along with others, gave me feedback.  He really responded to [the screenplay], and put his name on it,  and got involved as sort of a “godfather” of this project, which was lovely.  But raising the money is always challenging.  My first two films were much more piecemeal, we had a great number of many investors on the first two.  On this one, we actually had a single company take it on, and that was really fortunate.  Red Granite Pictures financed the film.  They had been reading scripts for two years, and they hadn’t yet found something that they wanted to be their first film … and then they found this one and decided that this was what they wanted to launch their company with.  So, it was really lucky in a way, that they found us, and we found them.

SS:  The topic of Friends with Kids is very timely, the NY Times just featured an article that the majority of births to women under thirty are happening outside of marriage.

JW:  Yes, that doesn’t surprise me. Why can’t we choose the rules and do it this way?! — with dating, with marriage, with kids.

SS:  Are you and Jon Hamm going to be “friends with kids”?

JW:  (Laughs)  I don’t know.  I’ll have to keep you posted.  It could go either way, we’ll see.  We love kids.  We love the kids that are in our lives.  It also hasn’t happened yet … so we’re open.

SS:  You and  Jon have a new production company, Points West Pictures?

JW:  Yes, it was our first project as well.

SS:  What’s next?

JW:  I’m developing a series that Allan Ball is executive producing, and I am acting in and writing with someone else.

SS:  Can you tell us what that’s going to be about?

JW:  I don’t think I’m allowed.  But they are going to announce it soon.  After that, we have a couple of other projects in development that we would like to get off the ground.  So with any luck, if this one does well (she knocks on wood), we’ll get the opportunity to make more.  I certainly hope so.

1. The Skin I Live In (La Piel Que Habito) – dir. Pedro Almodovar

            Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar, he of such acclaimed masterpieces as Talk to Her and Volver, crafted the year’s most engrossing and titillating film, The Skin I Live In. Driven wild by rage and familial tragedy, plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas) has hidden himself and a devastatingly beautiful victim (Elena Anaya) of his madness in a private mansion in Spain. Their relationship is more complex than warden and prisoner, however, and Almodovar – who wrote the script with his brother, Agustin – allows the story to gradually unfold in flashback and sparse exposition. As scripts go, this is Almodovar’s most focused: it balances on knife’s edge, threatening at all times to explode into grotesque milieu, ferocious sex scenes, and wrenching suspense. Banderas, as the slick but sick-minded Ledgard, gives the best performance of his career, mixing icy cynicism with seduction and terror; the gorgeous Anaya, one of the director’s many muses (including Marisa Paredes, who appears in the film, and Penelope Cruz), makes the perfect foil for the aging, stolid Ledgard.

2. Another Earth – dir. Mike Cahill, written by Mike Cahill & Brit Marling

The third feature on this list is also perhaps the most underrated of any in recent memory. Directed by Mike Cahill and written by Cahill and his female lead, Brit Marling, their film followers a young woman whose life is thrown into dogma upon the discovery of a second Earth in the solar system. Marling plays Rhoda, who hears on the radio one drunken night of this planet, and as a result, crashes into the car of music professor John Burroughs and his family. Burroughs’s wife and son are killed; Rhoda goes to jail and loses the chance to attend university; the professor enters a coma. But the richest pieces of the film comes from Rhoda’s depressive post-imprisonment outreach to Burroughs as he awakens years later, and they develop a relationship filled as much with love and honesty as with loathing and deceit. We know, though they do not, that the second planet can save both of their lives – and, like all truly great science fiction, Cahill’s film leaves the audience begging to know if it does. Another Earth also announces newcomer Brit Marling, whose award-worth performance opposite William Mapother (In The Bedroom, World Trade Center) drew roaring tears, as a multihyphenate to watch.

3. Drive – dir. Nicolas Winding Refn, written by Hossein Amini

Existentialist drama never looked so incredible as in Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn’s picture about a getaway driver for the Los Angeles mob. Refn blends Warholian aesthetics in both screen and sound with long takes to mine suspense of a caliber nearly extinct from Hollywood. Being on the edge of one’s seat is a pleasure ascribed uniquely to the cinema, and Drive steps on the pedal immediately without a single release. Ryan Gosling displays (without a name, and with bare dialogue) a now-iconic coolness in posture and presence; Albert Brooks, as a sentimentally murderous gangster, stands tall as his evil counterpart that lacks even a basic sense of morality. Both actors deserve tremendous accolades for their subtle, calm performances, and Refn is bound to be overlooked by academy after academy for his stellar work due to his non-American origins. Nonetheless, his film stands as the high water mark for plain-and-simple dramatic narratives this year.

4. Take Shelter – dir. Jeff Nichols, prod. Sophia Lin

Completing the list is another by a filmmaker with only two features to notch his belt with: Take Shelter, by Jeff Nichols of 2007’s Shotgun Stories. Shelter watches as Curtis LaForche, an average Midwestern father and husband, becomes haunted by visions of an incoming apocalypse. LaForche is played by Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road) as a good, stoic man whose greatest fear is the inside of his own mind. Shannon’s is bound to be the most overlooked performance of the year: he is at odds with himself from beginning to end, fearsome, compelling, courageous, and always magnetic. Nichols makes LaForche’s mind an enigma, strong but in danger of schizophrenia (which his mother has and his brother is possibly developing), and only in the final moments of the film do we learn the fate of the kindly LaForche family. The film strikes with bolts of lightning, electric at moments and flatlining at others, but like a being struck by lightning, Take Shelter has remained completely unforgettable.

5. The Future – dir. Miranda July

No film can boast more individualism or intense creativity than the second feature by performance artist, actress, writer, and producer Miranda July. July starred under her own direction as Sophie, a thirty-something children’s dance teacher who sabotages a happy life with her live-in boyfriend Jason (Hamish Linklater) as a means of a pre-mid-life crisis. Sophie and Jason are tips on the quirky iceberg for July, who instills the very atmosphere of the picture with disillusionment, melancholy, and peculiarity. In a way, The Future is a perfect companion piece to July’s remarkable 2005 debut, Me and You and Everyone We Know, in that her leads once again seem wrought from stray emotions and values unseen anywhere else in the film industry; here, however, July cements herself as one of the most adept dramatists in the independent film world. Pure, touching genius, July’s feature is the work of a master.

6. Certified Copy – dir. Abbas Kiarostami

Perhaps the film most likely to divide scholars and audiences of all kinds was the newest by Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. Quiet and contemplative, Certified Copy tails two people on a day trip through the Tuscan countryside that may or may not know one another. Those two are played with restraint, subtlety, intelligence, and grace by Juliette Binoche and William Shimell, an actor virtually new to films in his mid-50s. Shimell (a famed opera singer in his native England) is an author promoting a book about copied artifacts who just happens to encounter Binoche’s unnamed character at a signing. Kiarostami layers minute detail after detail, partly to deceive the viewer and partly to generate an unmistakable sensation of – oddly, yes – seduction. The whole film is an ode to the human mind, valuable for its ability to puzzle and conceive and deduce, yet bubbling over with confusion, indecision, and chaos. The performances of Binoche, as a fiery single mother cherishing the final years of her animal beauty, and Shimell, as a man willing only to spread himself so thin, are dimensionalized by Kiarostami’s beautiful script. Such is Certified Copy, a film with a sparse narrative and bursting, chaotic emotional undercurrents that stands as another notch in the director-writer’s valuable career.

7. Shame – dir. Steve McQueen

2011 was undeniably a year of tremendous second features. Joining Miranda July and Jeff Nichols in crafting a work of art this year was Steve McQueen, the British filmmaker of 2008’s Hunger. McQueen’s namesake was never quite so talented as the contemporary man, a former photographer whose newest film was the most courageous, most painful, and most honest of any on this list. Shame stars Michael Fassbender as Brandon, a powerfully handsome corporate hotshot suffering in all walks of life from crippling sex addiction. Much has been made of the film’s explicit sexuality, but for the purposes of the magnificent screenplay by McQueen and fellow Brit Abi Morgan, the nudity and sex only serves to deepen the natural anxieties of this little-discussed psychological disease. Fassbender’s performance, central in nearly every frame of the picture, is worthy of the industry’s highest honors; for this reason, it can be safely assumed that his no-holds-barred acting will be rewarded by academies everywhere with diddly-squat. Matching him scene-for-scene is Carey Mulligan as his manic singer sister Sissy, this generation’s most adept actress at projecting vulnerable love.

8. Bridesmaids – dir. Paul Feig, written by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo

Not much needs to be said about Paul Feig’s gut-busting Bridesmaids, as the passion project of writer/star Kristen Wiig and her co-writer Annie Mumolo was one of 2011’s highest-grossing films and a record-breaker for R-rated comedies. What can be said is that Feig’s sturdy direction guided Wiig’s performance as Annie, a depressed and lonely jewelry saleswoman, to be the year’s most entertaining. Few films can boast that their entire running time draws laughs, but not a breath is to be had in a viewing of Bridesmaids thanks to Feig, Wiig, Mumolo, and producer extraordinaire Judd Apatow (Anchorman, The Forty-Year-Old Virgin). Annie’s best friend, nearly married, and five of the funniest women ever to be invited to a week of bachelorette debauchery, embark on a film’s-worth of uproarious sequences that infiltrated the American zeitgeist. Quotable, complex, and brilliant, the film did what nearly every film in history has tried and what most have failed to be: the perfect escape.

9. Young Adult – dir. Jason Reitman, written by Diablo Cody

The sharp wit of Jason Reitman’s first three films touched a new pinnacle with this year’s Young Adult, starring Charlize Theron as a ghost writer of children’s stories who returns to her hometown on an ill-conceived journey. Theron, an acclaimed actress of startling beauty, plays a woman of many dimensions, most of which lead her to viciously assault the middle-American characters surrounding her in her quest to seduce Buddy (Patrick Wilson, Little Children). The complications – Buddy, her former flame, is married with a newborn daughter; Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt, Big Fan), a crippled accountant from her high-school class, seems to be everywhere in town – are subpoints to the jackknife dialogue by Diablo Cody (Juno). Cody’s script and Reitman’s direction, collaborative elements that joined once before to win both academy nominations; whether the payoff is the same or not here, their Young Adult is as biting and valuable as any film these bright comedic voices shall ever make.

10. Terri – dir. Azazel Jacobs, prod. Alyson Dickie & Lynette Howell

A final comedy of amazing sweetness and perfect casting completes this list in the form of Azazel Jacobs’s first major feature. A fat high-schooler – really fat, really tall, and somehow oddly gangly – develops a relationship with an understanding vice-principle played by John C. Reilly. Jacobs’s film is a diamond in the rough, an ill-advertised and word-of-mouthless picture that seems somehow to be missing from the valued archives of the current critics’ lists. No film was more tender or stranger than Terri, which gave newcomer Jacob Wysocki a starring role as Terri, whose relationships with Reilly and a weird uncle (Creed Bratton, The Office) formed a triptych of unique humanity. So exclusive does the audience for Terri seem to be that the picture’s excellent screenplay by Patrick DeWitt and performers have been doing next to no press for it in preparation. Surprising? Absolutely not. Disastrous? You bet your sweet bippy.