Sarah Polley and Greta Gerwig on "Frances Ha" - Conversations Inside The Criterion Collection

[Music] e the first time I saw Francis how was at Telly ride and I think it was one of the first screenings and so I went in with no expectations at all and no sense of what it was and I remember feeling this feeling of kind of overwhelming delight and this unmitigated Joy watching a movie which I hadn't felt in so many years and it was so amazing to be able to get lost in a world like that and it was really strange to me recently watching it again again and watching it you know a few more times to realize that the film is actually filled with this penetrating loneliness which I somehow didn't come away with the first time was that like an initial idea around the film for you that you wanted to see her alone a lot or there's something when you when you watch someone alone you feel like you don't you never get to do that I mean because if you're there you're there so I've always liked the mo I remember there was when I was growing growing up I see a lot of theater and and some of it was good and some of it was not so good but there sometimes there were moments in plays when a character would just walk onto the set and they'd be alone for a while before the other person comes in and says like well Harold called or something and um or like the moments in dance I love watching rehearsals of dancers because you see them before the dance starts and there's some quality of like Milling around that feels similarly alone and I think it's something I've always really liked Fran I'm in here come on honey I really really need to get in there I'll be out in a second Francis how much longer one of the things I love the most about your performance in this film is it's something I've never I don't think I've ever seen on film and that it's something that's very familiar to me and very human but I haven't seen anyone perform which is nope it's like we see Fran's inner monologue about her own behavior on her face as it's happening like the moment where I think it's Le puts his hand on her shoulder and she goes like and then you immediately see a whole monologue on your face without words and I was wondering about like the challenge of that like you're playing a character that's deeply inhibited but you have to be so kind of uninhibited to play her and you're giving voice to that inhibition and that commentary and I just wondered if I could ask you about that process I I kind of always thought of Francis as being almost like a almost like a clown in a way like almost like she has so many gestures like that that moment is one but then sometimes she does these like flourishes when she talks and it's kind of like committing to it and then pulling back instantly and I feel like that that was a lot of like flinging yourself at something and then deciding to pull back at the second that it's too late to pull back so you just to finish it and I think that that's like a lot of what's going on in her life and I I feel like I experienced that all kind of physically there seems to be like such room and freedom and and spontaneity in the way you move in the film and I'm wondering I know that it was a really scale down production like a really scaled down crew and and really a small unit and do you think that that was necessary for you to have that freedom of movement that sense of spontaneity it was very stripped down but it was highly controlled like it was very choreographed I'm thinking particularly if there's a scene Sophie comes over to this apartment I'm living at with the boys for the first time and I come in and I put a record in its place and I talk to her and then I go get us whiskies and I come back around I think we did that like over 35 times I'm not rich you are rare we need whiskies why did you do that many takes like what no one loves takes no um I I mean it's hard to explain now it's like being on a drug it makes sense when you're on it we wanted it to feel light on its feet but we also wanted it to be as perfect as possible and I think that's you just have to do it a lot to make it feel that effervescent or that effortless it's doesn't that's interesting because I feel like 10 takes it just looks labored and then 15 takes you're settling in and by the time you get to the 20s you're getting good it's good every you know and then you fine-tune it within that I mean I think it's similar to like my experiences when I was writing I learned how to really rewrite and hone something and perfect it in a way that I felt like I hadn't done before and I felt like I did that as an actor and as a writer as opposed to like your first impulse feels so good and it feels so good that just that you found idea to latch on to but like you have to get over the first love of your first attempt and you have to then like figure it out but I think as an actor I would always I'd never really had an opportunity to go beyond those first attempts and then I felt like I got to so are you writing instinctually at times like I I I was thinking in the context of playing a character that you write you know do you instinctually just understand everything about that character or are there things that you're challenged to try to understand about her and if so what were those things that were hard to play with her I feel like as an actor and as a writer you're always coming against these vast fields of not knowing the answers and I I don't know I I think it's scary because you feel like well if I don't nobody knows if I don't know but I think that's it's exciting too it just felt like it was coming from a place of real like endlessly replenished creativity and I don't know that you get those times your whole life but when you get them it's there's it's so fun it feels like the world just keeps revealing itself to you and it's like but it also feels like I wonder if that part of that comes from if you're creating a character that's totally original which probably doesn't happen very often where you know I mean I felt when I was watching it there's nothing derivative about it I haven't seen this character before I certainly haven't seen this kind of character before and having no sort of man in the picture and so I wonder like is that also scary though you don't have reference points I assume or did you have reference points of other movies or characters like weirdly this is not a connection that I think anyone would make but um like the David thulis character and naked wow not not that I was trying to be like that but that kind of like specificity of performance that felt like that's not him but it could have only come from him and it it felt like you got shocked when you touched that movie and I felt I felt like there was something of those kinds of performances that I was thinking about was that that live wire aspect that I I that doesn't make much sense and it does kind of when you explain it when you first say it it's totally shocking and weird but then it totally makes sense cuz it is just something where you realize somebody kind of went out on a limb and didn't really have you know a geography to follow or you know a math no in some ways I always imagine Francis embodied is it's very sad on the page like when you just read it because I had friends of mine read it and my one of my friends said she just was like I can't handle this dude like this is really dark and I don't that dinner scene is so dark in that dinner scene there's that monologue sheet about you know there's a secret world you share with someone who's your person and it felt to me like it is like unbelievably uncomfortable when it begins but then you kind of get lost in her world and I feel like that's maybe the experience of the film which is why it might be bleer on the page than it is in fact is that you you get kind of involved in her point of view so much or in the beauty of what she's saying or the joy the little moments of Joy she's experiencing that you kind of lose sight of the big picture or something in the same way maybe she does I don't know she like sells it to you it's that thing when you're with someone and you love them and they know it and they love you and you know it but it's a party and you're both talking to other people and you're laughing and shining and you look across the room and catch each other's eyes but but not because you're possessive or it's precisely sexual but because that is your person in this life and it's funny and sad but only because this life will end and it's the secret world that exists right there in public unnoticed that no one else knows about did that happen early in the process like that scene where she sort of talks about that was that an early scene or Noah said to me we should give her a belief and uh the belief should come true it was originally like much earlier in the movie but it was one of those things that you like can't you can't put it in the first 20 minutes nobody's with the character enough you have to put it a little late like you have to earn the right to give that monologue how did the process of writing together work I mean were you sitting in a room writing together were you separate mostly we were writing scenes separately and then we'd email them back and forth to each other a couple of the SC scenes we wrote in the same room but mostly not Noah is such a wonderful writer and I love his writing and for me it was like this I was so I wanted to entertain him like like when I would send scenes to him I would be so like nervous but excited and then he'd read them and he'd say it's really funny or it's really you know and i' I'd have this kind of swell of Pride and then i' seeing what he would do to them or how he would create scenes and it felt like a combination of like really building something together but also sort of showing off for each other but in a nice way it sort of like what it must be like to write music with someone but um kind of like well maybe I'll do this guitar riff over here like this little noodle I don't know to Sacramento International Airport gateway to Northern California the sequence where you go home is so lovely and I feel like especially in independent films whenever you see the parents of an adult protagonist it's almost always to mock them it's almost always with irony and in this case they're just treated with such love and respect and warmth and I just wondered about the process of like deciding to include your own family in the film and then also to portray them kind of in that light when we wrote the script initially that section was much longer it was like 40 pages and it was much more intricate and if it had been if we kept it that length I think we wouldn't have been able to use my parents or because we would have needed to hire actors and no offense to them but um but we kept in her going home and we just made it into these very specific moments of almost like the rise and fall of going home for Christmas the dinner the lights the stuff the taking down the light you know like all these little things of like family and um and I I felt like because it was so specific and because we were asking for such specific stuff that I feel like I I love Sacramento I'm from Sacramento and I feel like I could use my real Hometown and my parents without feeling like it was exploitative I could ask them to be part of the film The Dance uh choreography at the end where she has you know her amazing dance piece and I'm just wondering the the piece is so affecting what like what is that dance to you what did you want it to do what does it do why do you think it works the way it does I always get annoyed when they sort of like Fade Out on the actual mechanics of someone's job like or what they do I want to see it I sort of want to see and so I felt like in a way it was like including the dance it was like this is what she made and and we're not going to allude to it we're actually going to show most most of [Music] it and I explained to the choreographers who made the piece that I wanted something that felt like um that had like different sized bodies and different ages and people who who were dressed in street clothes that weren't necessarily matching and that it would feel what Francis says about it like I like things that look like mistakes this is an idea that we don't articulate in the movie but we thought a lot about it while we were making it was um in this kind of dance it's called Release Technique it's a lot of falling and it's a lot of almost like letting your joints and your skeleton fall and let like your knees slip out and then your whole body follows it and it's about using the momentum of the Fall to get yourself back up and I had to learn how to fall and Francis is Clumsy but also the nature of the choreography of the falling and the getting back up and um the difference between when is a fall planned and when is it not and when does it hurt and when is it okay and and and at the end when she is you know choreographing around stuff and has decided to take the office job and she's she is much more pulled together and I feel like intuitively you know as an audience member it makes sense like you feel you feel that progression but I feel like it's like kind of a nice opportunity to get to ask an actor like so so so like exactly how what are the nuts and bolts of that how did she pull herself together and why what I think we were trying to do with the ending was like when people are like oh the ending is so happy and it's like but you know everything that she has at the end was actually available to her before she just wasn't able to accept any of it she was she had access to this more grown-up version of her friendship with Sophie she had the ability to make her own work she had the ability to take the office job you know she had all these things in her power she just couldn't figure out how to do it probably head back about five yes I guess my last question is kind of it's a question that I ask myself a lot and I just thought it would be I never come up with an answer but I think it through a lot and I'm kind of curious just to hear somebody else talk about it Who's acting and writing and um I guess like what are you in it for like why like why do you want to do this why do you think it's important what do get out of it when I see other people's work and other people's films or if I go to the theater or or I see a piece of dance and it does something to me I and it shakes me and it makes me feel this one life I have more vividly and uh it changes me I think that that's where I I feel like I have faith in other people's ability to do that with their art and I don't know that I can do it with mine but experiencing it that way I guess gives me some feeling of like well it's worth it I don't know if mine's worth it but someone's is worth [Music] it

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Keywords: frances ha, gretta gerwig, noah baumbach, French New Wave, NYC, New York City, film, criterion, criterion collection, movie, interview, film interviews, documentary, interviews, culture, wild, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, journalism, vice guide, vice presents, vice news, vbs.tv, vice.com, vice, vice magazine, vice mag, vice videos, barbie, barbenheimer, greta gerwig, margot robbie, ryan gosling, oppenheimer, noah baumbach greta gerwig, greta gerwig interview

Id: 70HXyrodlek

Length: 17min 9sec (1029 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 21 2014