HAUNTED PARTIES: courtney marie in conversation with Rebecca Gransden
i thought i was prepared for friends and strangers to be able to glimpse some of my innermost thoughts, but sometimes i get a wave of anxiety: is it too much?
Rebecca Gransden
Rebecca Gransden lives on an island. She is published at Tangerine Press, Ligeia, Expat, BRUISER, and Fugitives & Futurists, among others. Her books include anemogram., Sea of Glass, Creepy Sheen, and Figures Crossing the Field Towards the Group.
BRIAN ALAN ELLIS on film with Rebecca Gransden
What film, or films, made the first deep impression on you?
My aunt and uncle on Long Island, for whatever reason, had a big-box VHS copy of I Spit on Your Grave in their collection, nestled somewhere between Stripes and Mr. Mom. I never asked about it, or even watched it, but it always kind of confused me. I thought it was a porno or something. I finally ended up watching I Spit on Your Grave as a teenager, which made me thankful that I didn’t watch it as a child, though I did accidentally catch A Clockwork Orange on Cinemax at a very young age and it completely freaked me the hell out.
Very often film is one of the ways we first come into contact with a world outside that of our direct experience. Which films introduced you to areas of life away from the familiar circumstances you grew up in?
The coming-of-age films of John Hughes showed me that rich people have problems also, I guess. And it took me years to realize it, but Revenge of the Nerds taught me that nerds too can be real shitty, problematic people.
What films first felt transgressive to you? Do you remember being secretive about any films you watched growing up?
As a child I became obsessed with this Swedish film called My Life as a Dog that I’d see on HBO. It’s about a poor, lonely kid whose mom gets put in a looney bin. Then his dog is placed in a kennel. He gets abused by relatives and teachers. He learns to read by reciting lingerie catalogs to some creepy old man. Then he befriends this girl who is kind of a tomboy and they box for fun and they beat the crap out of each other. Then there’s a scene where he takes a bath with the tomboy and it all seemed very sexual and scandalous to me. It felt very much like watching porn, this movie. It made me feel icky and sad and enthralled and I’d only watch it if nobody was home.
Are there any films that define your formative years?
The mid-1980s horror film The Gate showed me, at a very young age, that if you throw a dead dog (your untreated trauma and neurosis) into a demonic hellhole in your backyard (the void that exists within yourself) that bad shit will happen.
Can you talk about the influence film has had on your writing?
Plays, specifically movies based off of plays, probably influenced my writing quite a bit. Like Mike Nichols’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, or stuff like Comeback, Little Sheba. Splendor in the Grass. Tennessee Williams adaptations. I related to dialogue-heavy dramas about broken people. Experiencing Douglas Sirk films like Imitation of Life and Written on the Wind will really allow you to take your writing out of its comfort zone and just go bonkers with it.
Do you use film as a prompt or direct motivation for your writing?
I try going into each writing project with the same energy as an Ernest P. Worrell film, especially Ernest Scared Stupid.
What directors, film movements, or particular actors have been an influence?
I dig all the New Hollywood films of the 1970s. Hal Ashby, John Cassavetes, Peter Bogdanovich, etc. etc. That’s the best stuff, in a lot of ways. Great character stuff. Lots of hidden gems, too. Like Searching for Mr. Goodbar and Joe. Robert Altman’s Nashville is pretty much Brothers Karamazov, but better.
Have you ever made a film? If so, has the process of doing that had an influence on your writing?
I’ve acted in little short films that friends and I have made, but nothing too serious. I would be down to do something more substantial one day. Filmmaking is a lot of hard work, even doing just nonsense stuff.
Are there films you associate with a particular time in your life, or a specific writing project?
Ghostbusters will always remind me of childhood, especially because my mom sewed me a Ghostbusters jumpsuit for Halloween one year.
My buddy and I, as teenagers, snuck into a screening of Boogie Nights, but it was at the end where the drug deal goes bad and then Mark Wahlberg shows off his prosthetic penis. We obviously stayed for the next showing.
Donnie Darko was kind of the movie of my twenties. I first saw it while my band was on tour and we were crashing on someone’s floor in Chicago. I didn’t think it was very good at first, but everyone I spoke to loved it. It took several viewings with different people at different periods of my twenties to really appreciate it. It’s now a movie I revisit often.
My thirties were mostly spent in a majorly depressive stupor, though I do remember being very charmed by Frances Ha for quite some time.
Note: How any of this random bs relates to specific writing projects, well, I have no clue.
Thinking about the places you’ve lived, are there any environments that are cinematic? Have you lived anywhere that has been regularly depicted onscreen? If so, has this had an influence on your perception of the place, or how you’ve depicted it in any of your writings?
I grew up in a trailer park in south Florida, so maybe Gummo? I don’t think I put too much “place” in my writing, at least not intentionally. I guess I’m more into characters and situations than surroundings, I don’t know. There’s been a lot of films and TV shows made in Miami. The Larry Clark movie Bully was made in the neighborhood where I grew up. (The Florida Project also captures that empty, Florida outlet mall spirit pretty well.) I live in Gainesville, Florida, now, which is where that Paul Giamatti movie The Hawk is Dying (based off of a Harry Crews book) was filmed. That was 15 years ago, mind you, so the city has changed quite a bit since then. That’s one great thing about film—it captures a certain time and place to revisit, which is comforting.
Are there films you regularly return to, and do you know why?
I mostly watch films I’ve already seen several times and I do that more than checking out newer releases, which is probably a bad habit. I think it means I have anxiety and that I’m mostly depressed. I especially enjoy revisiting “light and crunchy” stuff. For example, I recently watched 10 Things I Hate About You again, and let me tell you, it still slaps.
Do you have any lines of film dialogue you regularly use in your daily life?
I regularly say “Dishes are done, man,” from Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, even when there are no dishes involved. Also, I’m pretty sure I still quote Wayne’s World as much as I did as a teenager and people rarely know what the hell I’m even talking about. A sphincter says what?
Are there individual scenes that stay with you?
The super sad ending in Wayne’s World where Wayne’s hot girlfriend resents him and all his idiot friends perish in an electrical fire.
What films have roused a visceral reaction in you?
My mom took me to see that violent Stallone cop movie Cobra when I was a kid and the film opens with a gun pointing directly at the audience and I remember it giving me quite a jolt. I probably peed my pants. My mom was nuts, by the way.
Are there films that are reliable for inspiring your creativity?
Pretty much any John Waters movie gives me a creative charge, though the results are never as funny or brilliant. See also: the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Which of your writings would adapt most successfully to film?
Probably my book Something to Do with Self-Hate, which would make a sad tour de force about lost, damaged people further damaging themselves. A real “feel bad” flick. Lars von Trier could direct.
Can you give some film recommendations for those who have liked your writing?
I recommend Shakespeare’s Thrashin’ (1986), where the older brother from The Goonies falls for the leader of the rival skater gang’s sister at a Red Hot Chili Peppers show, which Shakespeare rewrote in 1993, replacing the skateboards with rollerblades and calling it Airborne.
Brian Alan Ellis' yearlong Internet novel, HOBBIES YOU ENJOY, is being updated daily on Instagram.
JAYNE MARTIN ON ADULT ISSUES with Rebecca Gransden
With The Daddy Chronicles (Whisk(e)y Tit Books, 2022), Jayne Martin returns to bruised memories. The book is driven to explore how recollection takes form, fragments made vivid, torn from deep wells and thrust into an attempt at order, a chronology, a way to make sense of an absent father. This absence dominates, and is bitterly ever-present. Martin strives to confront the irony in this, and with this collection of memory vignettes, reframes her past.
When did you first have the impulse to tackle this subject? Was the form of the book apparent from the start?
The book just erupted from within and took me completely by surprise. It was subject matter I had tackled once before in an essay form, but never followed through on it. This time it wouldn’t let go. Why now? I don’t know. I think as we get older we have the desire to make peace with the things that have haunted us. I was in a flash fiction workshop led by Meg Pokrass in November of 2020. It was based on her novella-in-flash, The Loss Detector, about a fatherless family, single mom, its main narrator the young daughter. Each day we’d write a flash piece based on one of the stories. In doing so, I discovered that the character in “The Other Woman” waiting for her married lover who never shows, and the infant in “First Love” whose father ignores her cries, were actually the same person—and that person was me. That’s when it morphed from fiction to memoir.
There is a fragmentary feel to the book, both structurally and narratively. How purposeful was this?
Memory is fragmentary. We, or at least I, write to make sense of things. While there are many threads that make up a tapestry of a life and often writers interweave them in order to tell a larger story, my focus was singular and specific. I had questions. How did the rejection of the very first love of my life, my father, lead me to seek out others like him—men who were charismatic and emotionally unavailable? It was like putting together a puzzle without the benefit of the picture on the box. As I wrote, pieces emerged that I hadn’t expected. There was no way to plan the book in any kind of cohesive manner. Without Meg’s workshop, I doubt I would have found the structure at all.
Did writing about real people, often in an unflattering way, lead to any conflicted feelings? Are there aspects you left out of the book, or wish you’d included?
Had I included every bad romance, this would have been a mini-series. After a while, readers would have justifiably said, “Oh, for God’s sake woman. Get it together.” The last thing I wanted this to be is a pity party. The fact is, things turned out very well for me. Granted, I forged my way alone, but whatever my father didn’t give me in life, he did pass on a gene pool that made me strong, resilient, accomplished, healthy and so much more. As did my mother. I regret that she may come off in an unflattering way when the truth is she gave up everything for me. My father was the love of her life. She entered into a second marriage that was unhappy for her in order to make a stable home for me, and then, divorced again, struggled to raise me as a single mom. She died at just 54. I was 23. After years of being a selfish, disrespectful, horrible teenager, I didn’t have the opportunity to convey to her how grateful I was. My mother’s story is a whole other book, but whenever I try to write about her I’m awash in guilt and tears.
For your previous book Tender Cuts you use flash fiction. Were you conscious of the influence of flash fiction on your non-fiction in this case?
Long before I wrote flash fiction, I wrote movies-for-television for 25 years. Different from their big-screen brethren, TV movies are written in seven acts to account for commercial breaks. The “two-hour movie” is a misnomer. You have approximately 93 minutes of actual screen time to tell the story and at the end of each act you need a “keep them guessing” story beat to lure your audience back after the commercials. Raymond Carver could have been talking about the TV movie when he said “Get in, get out. Don’t Linger. Move on.” As it was, he was talking about flash fiction. So I came to the form well-prepared and it felt very natural to continue with it in The Daddy Chronicles where each chapter is akin to a movie scene.
Some of the most vivid moments are the observations of small, seemingly inconsequential incidences that ultimately have great emotional weight. This juxtaposition has a startling effect. Is this a technique you planned to use, or did it evolve naturally from the material?
Details place the reader in the story and create emotional resonance. I will never forget a scene from Mary Gordon’s brilliant novel Final Payments, where she’s dealing with the grief of her father’s death and the unresolved emotional issues between them. She’s cleaning out his refrigerator and picks up a head of lettuce that dissolves into a mushy, moldy mess in her hands. I read that book 40 years ago and that moment still sends me to my knees. The use of visceral details is something that pervades all my work. It’s how I see the world.
How long did the book take to write? What is your recollection of the time spent writing it?
This book was one of those rare writing experiences where the story just poured out of me, like it had been hovering for years just waiting for a point of entry. In Meg’s workshop, we wrote a story a day for 30 days. At the end of that month I had a first draft. Of course, there was still a great deal of work to be done, but just a couple of months later, I was ready to send it out. It was crazy. It was like the book knew what it wanted to be. Everything about its creation was a surprise. Most surprising was the anger that came up for me. I thought I had dealt with my feelings toward my father. Intellectually, I had reasoned that one cannot give what one does not have. I had forgiven him. But there was still a very hurt child inside of me screaming, “Hey! Not so fast.”
The book perceptively deals with trauma, both its immediate impact and ongoing after-effects. There is a self-awareness that accompanies the events, a distance that enables a matter-of-fact retelling. While this creates an unsentimental tone, it also demonstrates one of the main consequences of trauma. Could you elaborate on your intentions for the book with regard to the representation of trauma?
You kind of nailed it here. Distance from one’s emotions as a consequence of trauma. There’s a scene in the book where a writing teacher suggests I see a therapist to get more in touch with my feelings and my response is “I don’t tell him I’ve been doing my best to stay out of touch with those things for most of my life.” As far as my intentions for the book, I guess it’s a book I wish I had read decades ago. Maybe I wouldn’t have spent so many years thinking I was the only one broken. During the writing, I read Denna Babul’s The Fatherless Daughter Project, where I learned that one in three women identify as fatherless. I saw myself on every page. Maybe others like me will see themselves in The Daddy Chronicles and not feel quite so alone.
Could you talk about the locations in the book? Are there places you’ve returned to since the scenarios featured took place? Are there places you’d be curious to go back to, or those you’d not want to revisit?
I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, my early life imprinted with the sights and sounds of San Francisco, the bay windows of the grand old Victorian “ladies” like eyes watching over me. Although I haven’t lived there in many years, it is still the place in my heart that I call home. At the age of about six, Mom and I moved to an older four-plex building in San Mateo where I started first grade. It was my first stable home and I often wonder if it is still there, but have never gone back to look. When my mother married my stepfather, we moved to the house on Cherry Street in San Carlos. While all the houses around it are exactly as I remember, ours is gone. Demolished. As if it never existed. Those years of my life wiped away. In its place, a new modern structure. Seeing it gone felt like a death.
What is your experience with catharsis?
Writing the book wasn’t so much a catharsis as a way to step out of my “strong woman” persona for a while to say, “This is who I am and this is why.” I’ve allowed few people to really know me in such a way and I’m honestly not sure if I’m ready for the response.
You mention a spiritual component to your life, and cite a particular incident as having significance in the process of moving on from feelings that had a grip on you. Could you expand on this aspect?
I was raised Catholic and, although I left the church while still very young, the concept of a higher power, an energy that some call “God,” never left me. There’s a reason such beliefs are called “faith” and not “fact.” My mother was a big believer in guardian angels. When I look back at, particularly, my adult life, I have to believe in a Divine energy. No one could have been so “lucky.” There has never been a time when, confused or depressed, I have asked for guidance that some type of opportunity did not appear for my highest good. Every single day, sometimes several times a day, I align myself with the creative force of the Universe by taking a quiet moment to simply say “I AM” and express gratitude. Again, faith not fact.
A central theme, especially in the earlier part of the book, is of a young person burdened too soon with adult issues. For many, this leads to a perpetual state of being ill-equipped to deal with vulnerability. What challenges or observations did you encounter when compiling examples of this for the book?
“Burdened too soon with adult issues.” Yes. That’s exactly it. From very early on I was acutely aware that the adults were not in charge. That I’d better take care of myself because they were likely going to drop the ball. As a result I became a total control freak. “I’ll do it myself,” my mantra. Vulnerability? I avoid that like Covid. The use of humor to sidestep my emotions is still my go-to coping tool. There’s a chapter in the book called “On My Own.” It was during a time in my life when I was no longer a child, but not yet an adult. I was engaging in very destructive behaviors involving sex and alcohol and I had this dream where I was in a room from my early childhood with my younger self and she says, “You were supposed to take care of me.” As an aside, it is very common for fatherless daughters to become promiscuous, to confuse sex with love, use one to try to get the other.
How would you describe the book to a potential reader? And does this differ from how you describe the book to yourself?
The story of a fatherless daughter, my journey from hurt to healing. There comes a time when we all start to take stock of our lives. The focus begins to shift from mourning all the things we didn’t get to gratitude for the things that gave our lives meaning and joy. Honestly, if I could change the past and have the father I wish I’d had I don’t think I would do it. I’ve known people who had wonderful fathers and their lives still turned out a mess. My life turned out pretty great.
What was your original intention for The Daddy Chronicles? Has this evolved or changed? Do you consider your intentions to be fulfilled?
My intention was to write the book and put it out into the world. I’ve accomplished that. Now it’s out of my hands. The search for and need for love is universal. When we learn to love ourselves first, we attract the love of others. My hope is that the book finds its way to those who need to hear that message the most.
The Daddy Chronicles is published by Whisk(e)y Tit Books and is available at https://whiskeytit.com/product/the-daddy-chronicles/
DEREK MAINE on film with Rebecca Gransden
What film, or films, made the first deep impression on you?
The first film I saw in the theater was Flight of the Navigator. We must have arrived late. Or it was unexpectedly full. We had to sit in the very front row. I was very uncomfortable. I was seven or eight. It came out in 1986 so I would have been four but that can’t be true. Anyway, when you are four or seven or eight you are really small. I remember the screen was huge. I couldn’t handle the sensory overload. It felt like the screen was going to swallow me up and take me away on the spaceship. It was a very good movie. I have not seen it since.
I was visited by an apparition the night I watched The Care Bears Movie (1985). This sounds like something I would write in a story, but it’s true instead. My parents did not believe me. They told me to go back to bed. They said, “go back to your room,” or something just like that. They said I was scared from the movie. They said it was because of the movie I was scared and not the apparition. But I don’t remember anything about the movie, and I certainly remember the white mass of light that stood over my bed. That was 35 years ago. What did Daniel Johnston say? “Some things last a long time?”
What films first felt transgressive to you? Do you remember being secretive about any films you watched growing up?
I was downstairs on the couch, alone, and it was late. I pressed rewind a whole lot of times. Let me back up a bit.
I knew why Friday the 13th (1980) made me horny. I wanted to be a teenager at a summer camp having sex on the bottom bunk. You could pause it and pretend. That wasn’t transgressive at all. If anything, it was obedience. I was secretive about watching it (and wearing out the magnetic tape of the VHS) because I did not want my parents to catch me being horny. I think that is good and I hope my son, when he gets there in a couple of years, affords my wife and I the same courtesy.
Oh, but I started to tell you the real answer which is Disclosure (1994) starring Michael Douglas and Demi Moore. Demi Moore sexually harasses (assaults? rapes?) Michael Douglas in the movie. Spoiler alert or content warning, perhaps. Demi Moore and Michael Douglas used to date & have sex with each other. Michael Douglas is married now. Demi Moore gets hired to be his boss. One night they are working late. She makes a move on him, and he demurs. She gets more aggressive. He gives in, momentarily, and then, while she is giving him a blowjob and he is saying nasty things to her, he recalls he has a family, and he is able to break free from her grip. Well, I’m not interested in the movie on its terms so I won’t summarize further or offer anything resembling an opinion of its internal politics, but it was the sexiest thing I had ever seen, and I felt so naughty over and over every time and I would like to say two things about that:
- The idea of desire so overwhelming it upends your life is extremely appealing to me. I don’t mean Demi’s desire. Her desire, in the context of the film, is to set up an encounter that forces Michael Douglas to lose his job. Michael Douglas’s desire for her, and the transgression of that desire, is where I am at. I am someone with big feelings, not always knowing where I am supposed to put them.
- Sometimes my feelings are inappropriate. I do not act on them. I share them, sometimes, in my art. Sharing them is not a ploy to make my reader complicit. It is a bloodletting, a release, a solemn prayer that I am not alone.
- I know now, because I am older and have some life experiences under my belt, that my own desires awakened by the scene were intimately tied to the feeling of transgression itself. It is a naughty thing to be a pre-teen boy downstairs, alone, on the couch, and it is late, and touching the private parts of your body to arouse apleasure. I connected with Michael Douglas’ feelings of wrongdoing, of sin. Bad, bad boys we were.
Are there any films that define your formative years?
Tombstone (1993). I wrote a fictional essay that touches on the ‘why’ and was fortunate enough to have it published by/at Misery Tourism, but it honestly boils down to “I watched it a ton of times, at a certain time of my life,” which feels sort of accidental/incidental. Most of my favorite pieces of art feel that way. A friend gave me Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives as a 30th birthday present. My father liked North Carolina Tarheel basketball. Our tastes and preferences are less like choices and more likely circumstantial or inherited.
Can you talk about the influence film has had on your writing?
I can’t claim much, truthfully. It’s difficult for me to parse out my (non-literary) influences, but film is such a visual medium, and I cannot think visually. You know that exercise they give you, sometimes in therapy, where they ask you to visualize a red cube and then turn it over, so on and so forth? I cannot visualize a red cube. I thought, for a long time, that my memory was leaking out of me faster than I could make new memories, but it was just that I could not, and I cannot, imagine visually. The elements of films that have stuck with me are always lines. Or, more precisely, how it felt and how I was feeling when I saw the film.
Once, for instance, I went to an afternoon showing of Being John Malkovich, with a friend. When we went into the movie it was light outside. The movie messed with my head. I have some fears surrounding consciousness that were tested by the film’s premise. I was feeling sick to my stomach. I did not like thinking of someone else up there steering my thoughts. I have enough trouble controlling them already and back then, sometimes, they’d try to hurt me. When my friend and I walked out of the movie theater it was dark. I felt like I’d lost time. I felt like I was lost in time. I did not like that. We went to a Boston Market next where I had one of my spells. It was an unpleasant feeling. If I need that particular feeling for a character or scene then I can access it, but I cannot picture what John Malkovich looks like.
Are there films you associate with a particular time in your life, or a specific writing project?
During my mid-to-late-teenage years I lived with a much older man. He had an open-door policy and a couple of guest rooms for young boys to stay with him and he let you smoke in the basement and have full access to his impressive record collection. There was bread and cheese to eat, and usually he would bring home a case of beer and watch us drink it. Some nights he gave us pills and we’d take our shirts off and dance in the living room. If anybody asked, I was eighteen and just didn’t have any ID with me.
He would start asking, usually around midnight, if anyone was up for a massage. That was the only time you could go into his room, if you were up for a massage. I did not ever want a massage and my secret weapon was I can stay up later than everyone else always. So, I waited him out. But as soon as someone did take him up then I would have the television and his video cassettes all to myself. He had a copy of Koyaanisqatsi (1982). The film just blew me right away and I watched it every chance I could get. The house was small, so I turned it up loud and the score was done by Philip Glass and the whole movie was just a series of images illustrating how much we fucked up the environment. There is no dialogue or words, I don’t think. I cannot remember a single image now (no visual memory), but it gave me a feeling of great unease and catastrophe. I have never written about that period of time. I can’t recall anything of interest or particularly literary happening. But I do remember staying up later than everyone else to watch Koyaanisqatsi and being drunk and not understanding the film, but completely digging it.
Do you have any lines of film dialogue you regularly use in your daily life?
- When I am arguing with my wife, “I’m calmer than you are,” (Walter, to the Dude, in The Big Lebowski [1998])
- When I am stuck in a social situation I cannot get out of, I mutter to myself “I realized that not only did I not want to answer THAT question, but I never wanted to answer another water-sports question, or see any of these people again for the rest of my life.” (Anthony, to the two girls Dignan invited over to the pool, in Bottlerocket [1996])
LINDSAY LERMAN on film with Rebecca Gransden
What films first felt transgressive to you? Do you remember being secretive about any films you watched growing up?
I saw Liquid Sky in high school, and although much of it was mostly just weird to me because of how young and clueless I was, the amazing blacklight monologue scene and its “cunt that kills” focus (and its 80s underground punk aesthetic in general) seemed transgressive to me in ways that were thrilling and subtle. Also, the first person I fell really, really in love with was older than me and loved Prince. Because of this person, Purple Rain was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen, and to teenaged me there was something especially intriguing and powerful and mysterious in Prince’s approach to sex and sexuality, like it lived in some dark and sacred erotic realm.
Are there any films that define your formative years?
Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty got in deep, though I was pretty young when it came out and I was definitely younger than Liv Tyler’s protagonist. I think I was stunned to see a young woman on film who seemed complex and smart, quiet and searching. Up until then, I believe I had never, ever seen a girl or a woman on screen who might have a rich inner life.
Do you use film as a prompt or direct motivation for your writing?
I don’t. I generally don’t use any writing prompts. I write when I can, or when I need to, but I can’t make writing happen when it’s not happening (if that makes sense), and I also can’t treat writing as a job. I don’t clock in or log word counts. I’ve absolutely been inspired by film, though!
Thinking about the places you’ve lived, are there any environments that are cinematic? Have you lived anywhere that has been regularly depicted onscreen? If so, has this had an influence on your perception of the place, or how you’ve depicted it in any of your writings?
I think every place is a cinematic place in the right hands, but I spent many of my formative years wandering around the Sonoran desert and the pine forests in the high desert, so to me there is almost nowhere as cinematic. I think it’s the stark quality of life there — how everything that’s survived is almost exceptionally tough and wily. When I was writing I’m From Nowhere, I was lucky enough to live in the desert for a few years again, and since the book is set there, I found myself constructing the setting in a more cinematic way than I had planned to. The openness and the spaciousness and emptiness of the landscape made their way into even the structure of the story.
Are there films you regularly return to, and do you know why?
The past few years, I’ve rewatched a handful of films with some regularity. Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Jane Campion’s Bright Star, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Endless Poetry, Milos Forman’s Amadeus, Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight, and Claire Denis’s High Life. I’ve rewatched each of these for different reasons, but I’ve done so because it’s felt necessary to study them.
Do you have any lines of film dialogue you regularly use in your daily life?
I catch myself saying “Fuck it dude, let’s go bowling” a lot. I’ve probably watched The Big Lebowski more than any other movie. I used to put it on in the background when I’d come home late, though to be honest, I really can’t remember why that movie and not some other.
Are there individual scenes that stay with you?
So many scenes. The slow motion shots of Maggie Cheung’s arms and shoulders and neck in Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love; Béatrice Dalle smearing herself with blood in Claire Denis’s Trouble Every Day; Adele Haenel crying in the final scene of Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire; little Mai climbing on top of Totoro and taming him in Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro; the scenes in Liz Garbus’s What Happened, Miss Simone when Simone turns her electric and gloriously intense stare on her audience, interrogating everyone with her presence. It’s intensity and tenderness that stay with me longest, I think.
What films have roused a visceral reaction in you?
The answer to this has changed over the years, but since the birth of my daughter, I really can’t watch anything that features kids in peril. And it’s not just because I think “oh no, what if that were my child?” — it’s because when I hear babies or young children cry, I feel alarms going off inside me and I feel a strong physical compulsion to comfort and hold and soothe. In general I’m fascinated by how caring intensely for other vulnerable beings rewires entire dimensions of us — it’s definitely not just parenthood per se that does this.
Are there films that are reliable for inspiring your creativity?
I wish! There is almost nothing that’s really reliable for inspiring my creativity. It changes from book to book, phase of my life to phase of my life, obsession to obsession.
Which of your writings would adapt most successfully to film?
I am currently working on a screenplay. I’m adapting a short story I wrote, and it’s a really fun and intimidating challenge. I don’t know what will come of it yet, but I’m enjoying the entire process. (So far, ha.)
TEX GRESHAM on film with Rebecca Gransden
What film, or films, made the first deep impression on you?
This might come as a shock, but I think watching E.T. as a kid rewired my brain, changed my DNA, shaped my life's path. I would rewind the ending over and over and just bawl my eyes out as the ship made a rainbow across the sky. I wasn't just sad—it was joy as well. And I didn't understand how I could have two feelings at the same time, and how this movie could do that to me.
Very often film is one of the ways we first come into contact with a world outside that of our direct experience. Which films introduced you to areas of life away from the familiar circumstances you grew up in?
I remember my dad showing me Sling Blade when it first came out. I was like ten or so. But it blew my mind. Wasn't until I rewatched it earlier this year that I realized how much that movie affected me and shaped my human understanding. I'd never seen life like that, but it felt so familiar to where I grew up.
What films first felt transgressive to you? Do you remember being secretive about any films you watched growing up?
Gummo was one of the first films that felt really transgressive to me. I grew up watching movies like Freaked (1993), Stay Tuned (1992), UHF, Robin Hood: Men In Tights, etc.—which are commercial, but they're weird as hell and therefore transgressive to a young mind. It wasn't until high school that I got into Korine, Waters, Troma Films, Oldboy, Freddy Got Fingered… things like that. I was very much into cinema trash when I was in high school.
In terms of being secretive about watching films growing up, I never really felt the need to be secretive because my family was very much into watching movies. I was pretty much allowed to watch anything—when I could. My dad introduced me to John Waters.
Are there any films that define your formative years?
Terminator 2, Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, the Indiana Jones series, The Blob, Tremors, Jurassic Park. I grew up with the big blockbusters and those definitely shaped my love of entertainment and film.
Can you talk about the influence film has had on your writing?
All my writing I see as scenes—the shots, people acting them out, the pacing. Without films, I don't think I could write. I see a story as a cinematic arc that ends unfinished. I try to have the same plot-based conceit of a film, but then make it less about the plot and more about the people shackled to the plot. I feel like I've noticed this in Don DeLillo's writing—a huge influence on me. He is cinematically driven and often shapes his novels around a plot conceit and then completely ignores that plot. I dunno... Maybe I'm just describing writing in general hahaha
Do you use film as a prompt or direct motivation for your writing?
Both. Sometimes I take scenes/ideas from movies and expand or adapt. Sometimes I put movies on and just let it play in the background and let the sounds and rhythms of the movie make waves in my brain.
What directors, film movements, or particular actors have been an influence?
Paul Thomas Anderson is easily my biggest influence. The Safdie Brothers a close second. Harmony Korine a not-so-far third. But they all present characters and situations—albiet in different constructions—that I think people aren't used to seeing. They gently force us to acknowledge existences we tend to shy away from in productive ways.
Have you ever made a film? If so, has the process of doing that had an influence on your writing?
I've made numerous short films—never a feature. I've only scripted maybe one of those shorts. It used to be spontaneous, improv, random things that were cobbled together in the edit. This ended up being how I write too—allow for spontaneity and then adapt it in the edit. Make it work, because if my mind wants me to do it, then there's clearly something I need to explore.
I, of course, have a micro-budget feature I'd love to film/direct—a nasty little one-location thing about a guy at a party where no one thinks he's funny and all he wants to do is make one person laugh. Awkward, anxiety-inducing nightmare kind of movie. I'd do it tomorrow if I had the money and people.
Are there films you associate with a particular time in your life, or a specific writing project?
I watched Being There and Pee Wee's Big Adventure a lot while writing my screenplay, Fix Daddy. Inherent Vice and Gilliam's Brazil were on repeat while I wrote Sunflower. Paul Thomas Anderson films got me through a pretty bad emotional breakdown I had in my mid/late-twenties. I like to put on 90s action films while editing because they put me in a good mood and who the hell likes editing things?
Thinking about the places you’ve lived, are there any environments that are cinematic? Have you lived anywhere that has been regularly depicted onscreen? If so, has this had an influence on your perception of the place, or how you’ve depicted it in any of your writings?
California is infinitely cinematic. I used to work at a golf course and watch the sunrise every morning and that felt cinematic beyond anything. But I've never felt that anywhere I lived has been regularly depicted. I like to see places as anti-cinematic and show that aspect. Taking a place like Disneyland—constructed to be a magically cinematic place—and making it not at all like itself. More claustrophobic and grimey and unglamourous. Taking Hollywood and stripping it of the domestic tourism aspects. I probably answered this question totally wrong... Sorry.
Are there films you regularly return to, and do you know why?
Speed is something I rewatch pretty regularly—because it's probably the greatest action movie of all time (tied with Die Hard with a Vengeance). Unforgiven, because it's such a weird western. I've been watching Once Upon A Time In Hollywood a lot lately. I watch the Lone Wolf & Cub film series way too much. Frances Ha always puts me in a good mood. Saving Private Ryan is my most shameful guilty pleasure. I'm embarrassed to share it here, but... Oh well.
Do you have any lines of film dialogue you regularly use in your daily life?
I saw a lot of random lines from the documentary American Movie—things either Mark Borchardt or Uncle Bill says. "I don't have any dreams anymore" and "That's senseless."
Are there individual scenes that stay with you?
The "No Blinking/Processing" scene from The Master. One might say it's...masterful... sorry. The "give him the gun" jail scene in Unforgiven. The opening meta-scene of La Ronde is absolutely beautiful. But ask me this tomorrow and it'll change. My mind always runs through scenes I love nearly constantly—and there's a lot.
What films have roused a visceral reaction in you?
Uncut Gems—that was the last movie I saw in theaters. I never make audible noises in theaters, but so many times during that movie I found myself saying shit and oh god and stuff like that. And the ending had me jaw-dropped silent and I sat that way until the credits ended. A few other films are: Good Time, Umberto D., Naked Lunch, Kiarostami's Close-Up, Saint Maud (2019), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and The Tree of Life. I'm having more visceral reactions to films as I get older. I cry a lot more now and I really enjoy it.
Are there films that are reliable for inspiring your creativity?
Gummo (yes, again), Magnolia, A Scanner Darkly, Birdman, Adaptation—and the list goes on and on. But those are some main ones.
Which of your writings would adapt most successfully to film?
Either my forthcoming novel Sunflower or a couple of short stories—“Lovebird,” “Violent Candy,” and “Hollywood & Vine.” Apart from “Lovebird” which is published at X-R-A-Y, all of these are unreleased and will be in my collection from Tolsun Books in 2023.
Can you give some film recommendations for those who have liked your writing?
Herzog's Stroszek is a masterpiece. Then there's The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), Safe (1995), He Got Game (1998), Buzzard (2014), Tangerine (2015), Possessor (2020), Eastern Promises (2007), Fallen Angels (1995), Network (1976), Zola (2021), Hard Eight (1996)—and have I mentioned Gummo?
ROBERT KLOSS on film with Rebecca Gransden
Can you talk about the influence film has had on your writing?
A lot of my writing is me trying to translate aspects of film to my work. Various shots, sounds, atmosphere. Using film as a basis, rather than say using reality as a basis, or other books as a basis, means starting with another artist’s aestheticized version of the world. What I see in my mind when writing then is framed, lighted, shot, so on, like certain scenes or moments from films I admire. Then I try to translate it. The silences, black and white faces, gusting wind of Antonioni or Kurosawa, for instance.
The impossibility of it is sometimes frustrating, almost painfully so. But the impossibility of it is also why I allow myself to do it—the failed translation allows it become something closer to my own.
What directors, film movements, or particular actors have been an influence?
Filmmakers who are particularly good at sliding between reality and dream have shaped my writing: Wong Kar-wai, Carl TH Dreyer, Ingmar Bergman, David Lynch, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Andrei Tarkovsky, Werner Herzog, Paul Thomas Anderson. There are others I’m leaving out, but those have been the big ones over the years.
Are there films that are reliable for inspiring your creativity?
I don’t think so. I wish I could count on tapping into something whenever I need a burst. But I need things to happen more organically, more surprisingly. I can’t impose upon a film in that way or impose upon my process in that way. It has to emerge.
Have you ever made a film? If so, has the process of doing that had an influence on your writing?
I have not. For a long while I wanted to, really wanted to, because film seemed to embody more closely what I wanted to achieve in writing. At one time I think I could have done it. My brain now works so differently than it used to. I’m not sure if it’s aging or what. It takes me so long to muddle through. Things don’t occur to me like they used to. I can’t see them as clearly. It takes me so long to get anywhere. I have to fail, fail, fail, fail before something takes hold. There’s no vision, no certainty, no direction.
Can you give some film recommendations for those who have liked your writing?
I’ll give a list of some films that I admire that I haven’t mentioned. Mostly recent favorites. Most anything else by these directors would work as well.
Zama (Martel), High Life (Denis), Personal Shopper (Assayas), Decasia (Morrison), The Wolf House (Leon and Cocina), Horse Money (Costa), The White Ribbon (Haneke), The Favourite (Lanthimos), The Lighthouse (Eggers)
SEAN KILPATRICK on film with Rebecca Gransden
What film, or films, made a deep impression on you as a youth? Which films felt transgressive back then? Were you secretive about watching them? Would you say any of these films defined your formative years? Can you talk about the influence film has had on your writing?By some superannuated lapse in parental bargaining, a ten-year-old-me was allowed to view Reservoir Dogs and Menace II Society. Using an online source, I’d already printed both scripts on half-pages with a nineties printer. One particularly sadistic week of basketball camp and I felt nowhere ingratiated with the world outside my VHS player. To compound the problem, I’d recently learned how to jizz. Expanding one’s taste from that list of homages, the influences of these influences (beholding From Dusk Till Dawn in a theater) cemented the era. Gnostic steroid demon gunmen flipping through stylized ballets (John Woo) and iconic machine slashers endlessly stalking girls were refined into the grunge of Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer and Confessions of a Serial Killer back to back. Strange Days was social commentary (though this film, of course, is something hard to process nowadays: far beyond message, style over message) and SFW philosophy. Midnight Express and Little Odessa ripped people’s tongues out, showing how process should commence. Love and a 45, Judgement Night, and Coldblooded proved the influence of influenced influencers could also influence (particularly Leary’s performance). In one glorious, preadolescent swill, I downed local hero Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy, Bava’s Demons, Van Bebber’s Deadbeat at Dawn, and Giovinazzo’s Combat Shock, retro sleaze masterpieces, and continued slurping Welles’s beautifully manic take on The Trial, and the cold brutality of Haneke’s Funny Games, funk atop craft.Very often film is one of the ways we first come into contact with a world outside that of our direct experience. Which films introduced you to areas of life away from the familiar circumstances you grew up in?The industrial ghettoes that sparked David Lynch’s genius were a relatable surrounding, but how far he took that inspiration into a separate creative world felt integral. Richard Linklater is the complete opposite of my purview, but is undeniably iconic and inspiring, especially back when. The international canon filled in the rest of the planet with all I cared to view of it. Finding Angel Dust at Blockbuster, the work of Tarkovsky, the exciting, riveting Kurosawa, (a hell of a snow day home from school watching) The Dollars Trilogy and the exhilarating The Young Poisoner’s Handbook, the claustrophobic Polanski classics, and for tropical tourism: Cannibal Holocaust and Make Them Die Slowly. The Forbidden Zone in place of fables.Do you use film as a prompt or direct motivation for your writing? What directors, film movements, or particular actors have been an influence? Have you ever made a film?I saw the two best meta cinema on cinema masterworks of the nineties quite young: Living in Oblivion and In the Soup (seconded by Contempt and Day for Night). I decided to pursue script writing and attended this cheap workshop downtown Detroit ran by a minor production assistant from one Spike Lee film. He wrote the word “weak” on my teenage script, which I appreciate, but he followed that up with zero useful advice. Though his spit on the page was perhaps relevant preparation for writing (had had that before, and daily now — my own), he’d have done better taking a shotgun to my lap in that regard. All of Kinski (chiefly what Herzog unlocked), Terrence Stamp in Fellini’s Toby Dammit, alongside the end of Imamura’s The Pornographers — actors going sublime and achieving a moment beyond presence. Lately, what Mickey Reece and Joel Potrykus manage to wrought against these artless times almost lets me experience optimism. I tried, and meagerly try, to make films, the hardest undertaking of an art form possible.Are there films you associate with a particular time in your life, or a specific writing project?Detroit is shit for art. But once there was an abandoned grade school in the Cass Corridor, pre-gentrification, called The Burton Theater: matinees amid the ruin, shock art projects decorating (everyone hates those now), plastic bags spider-webbed throughout the building, attached to a urinal handle so that the whole building shivered like an entity when you flushed). I saw Trash Humpers, a cut of Häxan (I’d only dug the Burroughs version) with accompaniment by the band Wolf Eyes in an auditorium sans air conditioning — seeing the screen through a heat haze mirage. Crispin Glover came and presented his wild films, standing stock still in a tiny destroyed closet between showings, addressing each fan in one on one sessions (I stammered with unexpected fear through mine, not realizing he’d deign an individual conference with everyone). Right about then, just as I saved up to join (what was, to me, a very pricey inner-sanctum membership), the yuppie boomer landlord (who gleefully rode atop toy trains) evicted the programmers and took over, switching the schedule to tripe such as Love, Actually during Christmastime. A local source of inspiration appropriately cut short at its height.Thinking about the places you’ve lived, are there any environments that are cinematic? Have you lived anywhere that has been regularly depicted onscreen? If so, has this had an influence on your perception of the place, or how you’ve depicted it in any of your writings?Jarmusch’s longshot landscapes met with People Under the Stairs and Fresh, Tetsuo: Iron Man and all the blasted hellscapes of Mad Max wannabes make me homesick. My old car is briefly featured in 8 Mile, sorry to say. Leaving Las Vegas evokes hopeless alcoholic dads punching the wall next to our child heads. But writers are supposed to be overly erect about the working class because utilitarianism is this country’s shiniest lie. (Many of today’s unintentional autogynephiles (re: all millennial men) could use some physical abuse, I admit.)Are there films you regularly return to, and do you know why?There is a type of film enjoyed on first viewing, but you brushed by it without dwelling, only to realize later the level of supreme art that went momentarily underappreciated. I often return to Kill List in awe, Kontroll (saw when released, holds up amazingly), Miracle Mile (describe this film to someone beat for beat, almost as mesmerizing as watching it), Branded to Kill (flawless, beautiful), and especially The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I saw young enough to relish, to be broken further into film by, in fact, yet it took seeing it on a big screen, and many, many wonderful times over (it truly gets better with each viewing, grows in you) to comprehend the insane confluence of intensity captured on camera (dinner scene, etc.). Do you have any lines of film dialogue you regularly use in your daily life? Are there individual scenes that stay with you?The Coen brothers demand reenactment. I feel ran over deep into the beach like in Mike Hodge’s Pulp. I perform How to Get Ahead in Advertising aloud each night. I am nearly always issuing coffin mumbles from the end of The Vanishing. The depraved eighties overkill set pieces in An American Werewolf in London, Invasion USA, and Action Jackson are my manifesto.What films have roused a visceral reaction in you?The rowdy turns in The Caller had at me. Attack the Gas Station rallies the viewer. Pretty Persuasion and Dirty Pictures predicting the cultural future are eloquent. Alan Clarke and his influence on The War Zone and Nil by Mouth, Henry Becque-esque reality cruelty gets my goat. The expansive The Telephone Box shit my shit out, the bottleneck tightness of The Guilty as well. Wake in Fright is ultra real, the film of our age, a millennial sludge trap ouroboros. Killing the nude woman with pop guns in Munich seems far more perverse than the filmmaker knew, a demonic scene. Rec 2 is the most vicious roller coaster jump scare experience I’ve had in a theater. Putney Swope is the foremost American comedy. Green Knight had me viscerally verklempt about how much potential it wasted. People at the theater were pulling their seats up in a rage, screeching far scarier noises than this weak millennial take on the legend could muster (I sense the director, so technically gifted, has never been hurt, one notch too abstract, but close, Black Death did the heavy montage literary ending better). The Grey is a more classic, but far greater disguised genre thing really about accepting death. When The Grey pissed stupid people off, I agreed with it, not them. Are there films that are reliable for inspiring your creativity? When a genre subverts itself well: Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, a secret treat. Upgrade is the best action film comment on millennials. Seeing Riley Stearns’s work, and others like Resolution and Luz released in the last few years, is heartening. There will always be a Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, The Corndog Man, Baxter, Habit, Underground, La Haine, The Ugly, The Cell, Seven (films that had no business being so good), sneaking way above every decade’s typical crap (we gotta hunt for them harder now). Maxx, Aeon Flux, and Ren and Stimpy formed my first artistic sensibilities. I Never Left the White Room back to The Last House on Dead End Street (and Watkins’s nonsensical, hyper-retro art pornos), the bottomless, pointless sadism of The House on the Edge of the Park and Hitch-Hike — perfecto.Which of your writings would adapt most successfully to film?Marat / Sade would be the only path to trying. Nobody’s gonna build me a Deadwood set. All for naught and just about impossible. Can you give some film recommendations for those who have liked your writing?My genealogy could start with tracking down the legendary Salo at fourteen, then later seeing Possession after realizing relationships aren’t nice. Man Bites Dog was formative, along with The Hitcher (throat slit Eric Red’s gnostic demon killers: this, Cohen and Tate and Near Dark) and von Trier. Bertrand Blier’s early work was huge to me, and the pinku genre, including The Embryo Hunts in Secret. Miike’s dozen absurd masterpieces after high school, Angel Heart before. Peter Greenaway and the uncanny ending of Twentynine Palms, both ideal, but closer to scope of potential for me might be something approaching an Alan Resnick short, maybe The Signal (2007) if I got lottery lucky. The Eric Wareheim video for that Tobacco song is one of the best shorts I’ve seen (and the superb videos for Liars’s “Plaster Casts of Everything” (innovative rear projection), Rone’s “Bye Bye Macadam” (with its Joe Frank-esque electrical cult worship) Lorn’s “Acid Rain”, Jonathan Bree’s “You’re So Cool”, Oneohtrix Point Never’s “Sticky Drama” (demented Salute Your Shorts), Liam Lynch, the Feral House zeitgeist of Longmont Potion Castle and Francis E. Dec’s Worldwide Gangster Computer God, the abstruse oddities Charles Carroll is up to, glad that Sam Hyde prospers), ditto the simplistic, impeccable bit Cronenberg did (“they sense the threat”) for his book release (he should stick to film). Pig was a recent masterpiece of refinement, a classical tour de force that I’m incapable of, but appreciate (am a Vampire’s Kiss guy). I’d reach for the genius of Killing of a Sacred Deer, paced to Little Murders, cut like Chinese Roulette, Hal Hartley blocking, as ferine as Kite, Aster’s short C’est La Vie acted by the girls of a Walerian Borowczyk flick (trauma of Blind Beast, Lady in a Cage, Onibaba, or the sensuality of Survey Map of a Paradise Lost and In the Realm of the Senses), writing with a Sword of Doom ability to clear a room, but falling flat once Mifune challenges — most likely I’d end up with Trailer Town. I’m okay with that.
B.R. YEAGER on film with Rebecca Gransden
What film, or films, made the first deep impression on you?
The first films I truly loved were incredibly basic, because I was a kid. And I was a blockbuster kid. I was obsessed with Aliens, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, etc. And I still love those movies, even though they’ve long been replaced as my favorites. But I think the biggest mark they left on me was a love of grandiose scope and spectacle. There’s plenty to critique about those films with regard to emotional or intellectual complexity, but in terms of presenting a spectacular, grandiose vision they’re pretty impeccable. So they’re still a big inspiration—I’m often trying to marry emotional complexity and realism to a grand, mythic scale.
What films first felt transgressive to you? Do you remember being secretive about any films you watched growing up?
I’m not sure about transgressive, but the first film I encountered where I realized I was watching something supremely different was probably Welcome to the Dollhouse, which I saw not too long after it came out. I think it triggered my initial understanding of independent film, that there was such a thing as independent film, and that independent film was substantially different from what I was used to seeing. I remember thinking why does it look like that? Both the film quality and the actors—why does everyone look so fucked up? (i.e. like real people). Like I said, at the time my favorite films were the big blockbusters, so this was incredibly jarring. I kind of reeled from it at first, but it was so well done, so well-written and funny, I warmed up to it, and it’s become one of my favorites since.
There’s this film that no one has heard of that was extremely formative for me, called Slaughter of the Innocents. I first saw it on TV, late at night, when I was nine or ten. I had seen commercials for it, and knew it was about child murder, and that fact alone was so upsetting to me, but also incredibly compelling. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It felt so crazy that there was this film called Slaughter of the Innocents that revolved around child killing—I had to see what it was all about.
It centers on this FBI agent who specializes in child murders. But the twist is that he’s been training his eleven-year-old computer-whiz son to be a forensics investigator. So this eleven year old kid is helping his father solve these grisly child murders, and no one around him bats an eye—not his mother, not the other FBI agents, no one. It’s treated as though it’s the most normal thing in the world. So the whole thing feels like a goofy kids’ movie like The Goonies or Home Alone that’s been folded into this bleak film about child murder. It’s absolutely bonkers. But revisiting it now, I can see how that aspect spoke to me at such a young age. It had many of the trappings of what I loved as a child—these kid adventure movies—paired with this terrifying story that felt very real and immediate. This was 1993, so it was the tail end of the satanic panic, the height of stranger danger, and there are all these stories about child abduction and sexual abuse and murder on the news and on talk shows. Slaughter of the Innocents is full-on pulling from all these anxieties, and as a child it felt so real. Watching it now, it’s goofy and campy, but at the time it felt intensely relevant and powerful.
I’m also now able to appreciate it as an incredibly non-traditional first brush with dark and transgressive themes in art. Most people’s first exposure is something generally recognized as a classic—Silence of the Lambs or Twin Peaks or something like that. For me it was this bizarre D-list rip off of Silence of the Lambs and Twin Peaks. But unlike most D-list ‘90s films that no one has ever heard of, Slaughter of the Innocents still kind of slaps. The acting, writing and direction isn’t terrible. It has a beautiful and eerie vibe. The entire thing feels as though it exists within a world that’s ending but no one realizes it yet—and if there’s one through-line between all my books it’s my attempt at trying to capture that feeling. So despite its obscurity it had a pretty enormous impact.
Can you talk about the influence film has had on your writing?
I’m influenced by film in a fairly unique way. I’d love to know if this happens with anyone else. Essentially: I watch a lot of good stuff but I also watch a lot of garbage. Sometimes I just want sound and image in front of me, and I’m pretty easily entertained. And often I find so much inspiration in the dumbest shit. I’ll be watching something like Detective Pikachu, and there might be a little visual gag, or an offhand remark played as a joke—and I’ll think “What if we took that gag seriously, and played it out to its most logical conclusion?” That sometimes becomes the foundation for a scene, or a character, or an entire story.
Earlier this year when my wife and I were dealing with the side effects from our second vax dose, we threw on the Shrek movies. And no joke, a brief gag in Shrek 2 ended up inspiring the premise for my next novel. The novel will in no way read like something inspired by Shrek 2—it’s this quiet, mournful drama—but I’m almost completely certain that if I hadn’t been watching Shrek 2 I never would have gotten this idea.
I think the way this works is that “good” or “serious” films (however you want to qualify that) tend to be fully realized artistic visions. They’re already taking their premises seriously and playing them out to their most logical conclusions. At the same time, they’re also giving you less to build with. Like, there’s not really anything I would try to change or improve upon with something like The Piano Teacher. There could be structural elements I borrow from great art, but less so with regard to content.
But “bad” movies (or silly movies, or generally unserious movies, or lowest common denominator movies—however you want to define them) can be rich in unrealized potential. There are materials within that can be scavenged and improved upon and built into something radically different from how they were originally conceived and presented. I find that weed helps.
My friend John Trefry who runs Inside the Castle was talking about this too, that engaging with garbage forces you to bring more of yourself to the table in order to appreciate it than a classic piece of art does. It can require a more active engagement (again, weed helps). What you end up enjoying or being inspired by will inevitably be more personal, and have more to do with your own perspective rather than the creator’s.
What directors, film movements, or particular actors have been an influence?
I’m going to use John Carpenter not just because his films have had an enormous impact on me, but he also serves as a great counterexample to some stagnation I currently see within the horror genre. One thing that’s fascinating about Carpenter is that, ultimately, he wanted to make Westerns. But he didn’t have the necessary resources, so he adapted his vision into something completely new, while still holding onto that root inspiration. You can see traces of Westerns throughout his filmography, in the cinematic and narrative languages he uses, but you’d never mistake his work for John Ford’s. Most importantly, he didn’t just go and make a shoddy knock off of a John Ford film. He created something new.
Something I kind of loathe right now, specifically within the horror genre, is the overwhelming obsession with nostalgia. I see a lot of directors and writers content to ape what came before them. And I’m sure much of it is done out of genuine love (just as much of it is done as a cynical cash grab). But regardless of intention, strictly rehashing what came before leads only to stagnation. It signifies a misunderstanding of what made the films of the 70s/80s/90s/whenever special: they brought something new to the table, and reflected something about the time and culture in which they were created.
You can’t just photocopy magic and expect the outcome to be magical. You need to do something different with it; if not something new, then something personal and sincere, something beyond “I like this.” Like, I tried watching Fear Street 1994 and got maybe five minutes into it. “Oh, we’re doing Scream? We’re just going to do a bad version of Scream?” And I shut it off. I’m not interested in watching a bad version of something good that came before.
So John Carpenter’s filmography is just a persistent lesson in how you can take something old and beloved and transform it into something completely unrecognizable, yet equally as powerful.
Have you ever made a film? If so, has the process of doing that had an influence on your writing?
The past couple years I’ve been collaborating with this filmmaker Nick Verdi.
I acted in his short film Angel of the Night, and co-wrote his debut feature Cockazoid. It’s really forced me to learn how to develop and communicate my ideas in a quick and concise fashion—something I’ve never been good at. Writing obviously tends to be a solitary endeavor—you’re communicating your ideas to yourself in your head and on the page, and then you refine those ideas over an extended period of time until they’re ready for someone else to take a look. And this can take years. But filmmaking needs to be quick—especially run-and-gun, beg-borrow-steal no-budget filmmaking—so if you have an idea, you need to be able to communicate it efficiently. You can’t just wait for inspiration to come, because there's a schedule you need to adhere to. You really have to get in there and problem-solve and make shit work. So that’s been a welcome challenge. It’s forced me to learn how to refine my ideas faster.
Thinking about the places you’ve lived, are there any environments that are cinematic? Have you lived anywhere that has been regularly depicted onscreen? If so, has this had an influence on your perception of the place, or how you’ve depicted it in any of your writings?
I’ve lived in Western Massachusetts my entire life, and maybe it’s just a bias but I’ve always found the area (and New England in general) to be extremely evocative and cinematic. Funny enough, the newest season of Dexter was just shot here (including a diner that’s a two minute drive from my apartment). But yeah, I think part of it is the juxtaposition—vast woodlands and hills abutting rotting factories and strip malls. Cities built on the sides of mountains. There are these insanely wealthy towns with tiny hidden nooks where they keep all the low-income housing, far from sight. Also the architecture—some of the buildings here are hundreds of years old. Same with the cemeteries. The past and the future seem to be constantly scraping up against each other. It’s a dynamic, conflicted landscape.
Are there films you regularly return to, and do you know why?
Hands down my favorite film is Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And here everything collides: it’s a wholly unique blockbuster on a grand scale, with astounding vision and spectacle, and it’s also a little trashy. There’s really no universe where Keanu Reeves should be in this movie, but I love that performance; he fits the character better than people give him credit for. There are also parts in the later acts that kind of fall apart and make no sense, but it doesn’t really matter. It becomes part of the film's overall character. It’s gorgeous and dark and silly and bloody and horny, and there’s this powerful romantic emotion running beneath it all. The ending knocks the wind out of me, always.
I just admire the hell out of it. And it consciously represents an end of something. Coppola made it specifically because he foresaw that big-budget films that rely on elaborate costumes, sets, and practical (in-camera!) effects were on their way out. As a result, he pulled techniques from the entire history of filmmaking. It’s a culmination of the form. He believed this would be the last opportunity to make a film at this scale the traditional way. And he was right! You couldn’t make Bram Stoker’s Dracula today. And that’s terrible. What a loss.
Which of your writings would adapt most successfully to film?
I’m going to go the opposite direction and give one that I think is pretty much unfilmable: Amygdalatropolis. Content aside, the vast majority of it takes place on online imageboards, and I can’t really think of anything less cinematic than that. I know some filmmakers have done desktop films, but as far as I can tell those still primarily rely on webcam footage, and I’m honestly a bit skeptical of how much life the form has.
I’d be very curious to see how someone would interpret Negative Space. I have a very distinct vision in my head of what that would look like, but the nature of literature is that every reader creates their own vision from the text. You can never know what your story looks like inside another person’s head, so a film adaptation would be the closest you could come to actually observing that.
Can you give some film recommendations for those who have liked your writing?
River’s EdgeThe GateThe Doom GenerationBenny’s VideoKairo
JULIET ESCORIA on film with Rebecca Gransden
What film, or films, made the first deep impression on you?
I remember watching Beetlejuice over and over as a kid. I got nightmares from things that kids aren’t supposed to get nightmares from, like The Care Bears movie, but for some reason this movie didn’t bother me? Explains my goth roots.
What films first felt transgressive to you? Do you remember being secretive about any films you watched growing up?
I wasn’t allowed to watch rated R movies for a long time (except my parents did let me watch The Shining and The Exorcist in junior high). When Pulp Fiction came out, a lot of the boys in my class—it was all boys—watched it and were talking about how cool it was and I was so jealous, Pulp Fiction seemed so cool and mature to me.
I also remember my parents having a recorded copy of Body Heat on VHS and I was under the impression that this was something they didn’t want me to know about because it was dirty.
Are there any films that define your formative years?
SLC Punk is a silly little movie but I have a lot of affection for it. The party scenes feel true-to-life, and when I was in my teens/early 20s it was really relatable to me. (Fun fact: writer Chiara Barzini appears in this movie.)
The Virgin Suicides made a big impact on me for a lot of reasons—its dreaminess, the images, the portrayal of teen girlhood, and the subject matter of suicide.
I saw Donnie Darko when I was around 20 and it kinda blew my mind. I remember being like Wow, movies can do this! and wanting to talk about it with my friends but I didn’t have any artsy friends at the time and nobody cared.
Do you use film as a prompt or direct motivation for your writing?
Not entirely, but at one point during the writing of Juliet the Maniac I got this strange idea that I needed to match it with the color palette of East of Eden? This doesn’t even make sense. I don’t think it even made sense to me at the time. I was feeling lost in the manuscript when this happened.
What directors, film movements, or particular actors have been an influence?
I want to use this question to talk about how much I love Riley Keough. I love Riley Keough! She’s amazing in everything I’ve seen her in. I love her voice. She’s hot. I have a big crush on her.
American Honey (with Riley Keough)—there are some scenes in Juliet the Maniac that take place in a van. I watched that movie and tried to get the van scenes to at least resemble the van scenes in American Honey. That movie got the milieu of “fucked up youths in a van for long periods” thing down perfectly.
Have you ever made a film? If so, has the process of doing that had an influence on your writing?
Yes, I made a bunch of short films directly related to my first two books. I don’t really think they had an influence—mostly I just found it exciting to work in a different medium. Writing is my favorite artistic medium and I find it to be the most… spiritual? in that you can directly inhabit another person’s mind and thoughts… but there are still limitations to it. There are certain things you can only do with film. It felt fun and freeing to be able to work with images and, especially, music. I’d like it if you could force people to listen to a soundtrack to your book.
Are there films you associate with a particular time in your life, or a specific writing project?
I watched Drugstore Cowboy about a hundred times when I was dating this junky who was very bad for me. (Referring to him as a junky seems harsh but also accurate.) He’s dead now. Bad memories.
Another dead boyfriend (different dead boyfriend) memory are the movies of Jim Jarmusch. I still don’t like Jim Jarmusch movies, excepting the zombie one. I liked the zombie one.
Thinking about the places you’ve lived, are there any environments that are cinematic? Have you lived anywhere that has been regularly depicted onscreen? If so, has this had an influence on your perception of the place, or how you’ve depicted it in any of your writings?
All three places where I’ve lived as an adult were cinematic. I grew up in Del Mar, CA, which is sandstone bluffs, blue ocean, bent Torrey pines, and that soft golden light that is distinctive to Southern California. The beach in front of the house where I grew up has always felt creepy to me, which I tried to portray in this movie and the corresponding story. It has a lagoon that gets misty and just looks vaguely ominous.
West Virginia, where I live now, is so beautiful that it feels aggressive. I regularly feel distracted while driving to work by the aggressively beautiful mountains and trees and rivers and sky. I have some stories in my new, not yet published collection that feature me writing about this aggressive beauty. It makes me kinda sad that movies set in WV are generally filmed in Georgia, rather than on location. I wish WV would get a decent airport and give out tax credits so they could be filmed here. Seems like a missed opportunity.
And New York, where I went to grad school… I think the way it’s depicted in movies, books, and music is a big reason why I wanted to go to school there in the first place. I’ve tried to not write about it too much because it’s been covered so many times, but I also didn’t want to shy away from it either. When I had a story that I really wanted to write that absolutely needed to be set in New York, I let it be set in New York.
Are there films you regularly return to, and do you know why?
I feel the need to watch Gangs of New York about once a year. I’m not even sure why. I guess because there are so many good characters, and it feels so ambitious in terms of scale. Goodfellas and Taxi Driver are other Scorsese movies I feel the need to watch fairly regularly.
The aforementioned The Virgin Suicides is another one. I’ve watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood four times and could watch it again (fuck the haters for this movie, you all are losers). It’s pretty much a perfect movie, from the editing to the acting. I am also really into anything related to the women of the Manson family—not Charlie, he’s boring, but the women—and anything that could be described as California Noir.
Under the Silver Lake is another recent “California Noir”ish movie I could watch again.
And David Lynch movies, of course: Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet, and Wild at Heart are movies I could watch over and over.
I loved Midsommar (again, fuck the haters, you’re boring) and feel like that movie was kinda made for me, with the imagery and the weird nature/pagan shit and the woman character getting the upper hand in the end.
I saw Ganja & Hess for the first and so far only time last year but it really hit me hard. Like the other movies, I think a lot of it has to do with imagery/general aesthetic.
What films have roused a visceral reaction in you?
Waves was the most recent one. It gave me a stomach ache, big time.
Can you give some film recommendations for those who have liked your writing?
All of the ones under the “films I regularly return to” section, plus Good Time, The Neon Demon, The Witch Who Came from the Sea, Ordet, The Virgin Spring, Through a Glass Darkly, The Hunger, American Honey, Thou Wast Mild and Lovely… I could go on but that’s a decent list.
This series has not much to do with my writing, but I want to recommend Small Axe. That series was amazing and it got less recognition than it deserved.