One of the most talked-about films of the Tribeca festival this year, is a no-holds-barred revenge fantasy about a woman who is viciously raped, has her life thrown off the tracks and eventually comes to realize that the only way things will ever make sense again is if she tries to right that wrong. It's not a film that Pauline Kael would look kindly on, since it very much espouses a kind of eye-for-eye, 'let's settle this thing out of court' kind of adjudication. Since seeing the film last week, I've talked to people who both agree with the main character and the decisions she ultimately makes and those who are horrified by it -- you'll have to see it yourself to decide.
The star of the film, , is at the festival this year and turned up for a press conference to talk about the film, along with director and co-writer , co-writer and co-star . Here is a sampling of some of the questions and answers from the talk:
Moderator: Talk about how you guys put this film together.
Brian: Well, the project, Talia and Rosario were working on for a bunch of years together as a vehicle for Talia to direct and for Rosario to star in -- Talia wrote it with her cousin Brian.
It was brought to me by Rosario's mom, Isabelle. I read the script and met with Talia and had a long discussion about the project and how she saw it. From there, putting it together was a quick process -- tough on every end, for everybody, but a quick process -- we're very excited by the way it turned out.
Moderator: Rosario, how did you and Talia meet?
Rosario: Talia and I met at Lee Strasberg when I was 16 years old and she was 15 years old. We had been doing short films all throughout her NYU tenure, and that was pretty much all her Sight and Sound films.
With the money from Pluto Nash, I funded and produced her thesis film at NYU, a 20-minute short we did on 35-millimeter, and we did another short film, actually, for Glamour Magazine. They had asked me to direct, and I asked if she could write and direct it, which was really great, and just trying to always establish us as a bonafied team. We've been talking about it for almost 12 years now, that she was going to write and direct and I was going to act and produce.
We've been doing it behind the scenes for a long time, and this was our first feature that we were able to get off the ground. It took us a couple of years, until we found Morris, and then it was very quick at that point, but there was definitely a lot of peddling the script around for quite a few years, there. We had to find the right collaborators to help us keep the integrity, which was difficult.
Moderator: Where did the idea come from?
Talia: We all love movies, the three of us, Brian, Rosario and myself. The movies that we love kind of come from -- I personally love movies from the 60s and 70s -- I love movies that don't tell you how to feel and allow you to experience the film with the character, and it was very important to us to create a story where you could watch characters change over the course of it, and endure situations that are not easy to explain and watch them evolve .
.. and let the ending speak for itself.
These are all things we set out to do and did not compromise on the script.
Moderator: Were you concerned at all that you might have trouble finding distribution?
Talia: Yeah.
We knew when we wrote this that it was extremely difficult subject matter ...
but we decided that we weren't going to compromise the elements of it. We said 'we're gonna wait until we have an opportunity to make the film without compromises.'
Moderator: Rosario, how did this differ from doing big studio films?
Rosario: Well, I've always done independent projects over the years. I started off with independent films, so it feels like coming home, actually. It was a perfect way to do this.
I was working with a friend of mine who I've been working with for many, many, many years. A lot of the people who are involved with the project, the crew, and of course Brian, people who have been highly influential in my life since I was a teenager, and finally, incredible actors like Chad and Marcus, who are extremely brave and raw and incredible, and doing it as the seventh project I'd worked on at the end of 2005. I had done Rent that year, I had done Shakespeare in the Park, I had shot A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, I shot the short film with you, Little Black Dress, I shot Clerks II, and I shot Killshot, I did the press for Rent, and then the very next day we started shooting this film.
It was a whirlwind of a year, and it couldn't have been more perfect. I felt so prepared -- tired, but exhilarated and stunned and impressed about what we were pulling off under incredible duress, here in New York City, with someone who I love very much, and I'm so proud of this film ..
. having to wear both the producer's hat and going through this very emotional experience of playing this woman, exploring and dealing with sexual violence, it was compelling as an actor, but as a woman, taking on this role in my own personal life, it was really incredible and daunting and challenging. We hit the ground running with this one.
We didn't make it easy on ourselves for our first film, at all, and I'm very proud of that, actually.
Moderator: Brian, can you talk about the writing?
Brian: It took about a year and a half, I would say.
It took quite a while for us to hammer it out. There were a number of issues. We talked about the main idea with Rosario, we kind of went through the whole thing as a treatment, and then from there we all kind of agreed that this was what we wanted to do, and we then set forward.
Talia: It wasn't until Rosario was absolutely willing to do this that Brian and I resolved ourselves to go into the dark abyss and actually proceed with writing it.
Moderator: Chad, how was it for you?
Chad: It was one of the most fascinating creative challenges I've ever encountered, personally, physically and emotionally.
I couldn't have trusted Talia more -- we had so many discussions about where this was coming from, and I had absolute faith in what these guys were trying to do. Where I got to go in that role is, for an actor, a wet dream -- literally. So, psychologically, there were things I go to do with that character, places I got to go within myself, and bring out and share with an audience, that every actor strives to do.
It's as good as any role you could play on the stage, so to be able to do that in the film world is very exciting.
Press: Talk about the pacing of the film.
Talia: It was the intention from the beginning to have a very methodical pace for this film, so that we were always pay attention to the characters and especially to Maya, going through the entire experience.
So we were paying attention to her internal experience. To me, the way to do that is that you don't have to cut every five seconds. You don't have to cut to a reaction shot if you don't need it.
I kept this sort of inner logic to myself as to when I would make a cut ...
it's a very mental world, the entire thing is partially in her mind, I guess, or a reflection of what's going on in her mind. We are paying attention to how she's internalizing this experience ..
.
Rosario: Also, it was fun to be able to play with, not just changing my own personal demeanor and having the character's journey be something that you only witness on her, but you see the movie transition in many different ways as well. It travels, it goes from environment to environment, the music changes, the lighting changes, it goes from bright to dark.
The film is called Descent on many levels for that reason. It was great to explore that through every single means possible, and not just requiring it from ourselves as actors or through our costumes or makeup or hair changes, you know, we didn't want it to be that obvious. It was a stronger experience.
You didn't know where it was going, for that reason, because we were always involved in the environment we were at. It's a college film, and then it's a romance, and then it's sexual violence abuse, and then it's not a court drama, it's not a 'society's ills' issue, it's a woman and you're watching her, journeying with her through the summer, and into this club, and then its back to school, and suddenly its a revenge movie. It keeps changing.
Press: Chad, how did you prepare for this role, of someone who performs this rape?
Chad: Strangely enough, when I first read the script, I had this emotional reaction that I understood Jared immediately, at least on one level. What I discovered on that first read is really what carried me through to the very end.
For me, what Jared was about was that he had been completely disempowered by everybody in his life, and probably by his own self also, and the only way he could get power back and get love, was through these acts. He's really someone who feels that he's not enough on his own and needs to acquire love in this unusual way, and people call him evil or vicious or a rapist, whatever they're gonna call him, but I couldn't see him from that perspective, because that wasn't how he saw himself. So I really had to come from his heart, and I tried to play it from that whole place and not ever judge him, so I came from that perspective the whole time.
As far as the scenes we had to shoot, Rosario and I just sort of had some discussions to sort of create trust, but neither one of us really created a line to cross, so there was no boundary, necessarily. There was never a feeling of having crossed a line, so that was exciting for me. Usually, you're very clear about 'this is where I'm willing to go' and 'this is where I'm not willing to go,' and there was a feeling of danger all the time, because neither one of us knew how far the other one was gonna go, so that was very exciting.
Press: Rosario, it seems like your character just gives in at one point, to get it over with.
Rosario: I don't think she gives in as much as she gives up. There's the shock of 'this was someone I like.
This was someone who two seconds ago I was kissing, and I wanted to be kissing. I actually was starting to feel like, wow, this was a nice date and I kind of like this guy.' It's hard, when horror happens to you.
You don't want to think that it's real. So in many ways, the journey she goes through, becoming more promiscuous, that is a lot of what happens to a lot of women who experience sexual violence. They try to normalize it, because if you don't, you have to really deal and look at the horror and know that there are people out there who will hurt you -- that will actually hurt you.
When you say 'stop,' they will not. That's a really difficult thing to think about in your day to day life, when you're getting coffee and when you're walking down the street and saying 'hello' to people, to know that that line can get crossed. I think that's an interesting thing -- in that moment, it's not the sexual violence really, that's offending her -- this is not someone who, necessarily, didn't want to have sex with this guy -- it's the way he's treating her, the way he's talking to her, he's calling her all these names .
.. she's not there for him.
He's experiencing himself with her in a way that ...
they're disconnected. That's where the horror is. That's what we're exploring in this -- relationships, how we are with each other, the trust levels that we have, the vulnerabilities that we have with each other, and whether or not that's respected.
Who is accountable for that?
Press: In the writing, did you ever feel that you were going too far, or not far enough?
Brian: I know that it was doubly-difficult, because we were writing this particularly for Rosario, who is a really great friend of ours, and I think that made it very difficult at the time.
I remember we spent a lot of time just getting over that hump and then getting to the level of 'how far do we want to take this within the context of who this character is?' It was very challenging. We had to make some really difficult choices about what we wanted to do, but ultimately we felt like this was telling a story that we wanted to tell, and I don't think that was lost -- I felt like everything the two of them added to that scene was brilliant.
There were aspects of it that were written, but most of it -- the chemistry that happens between them as it sort of unfolds, that whole scene -- was largely theirs, and it was phenomenal.
Press: Rosario, what actresses do you like watching?
Rosario: I like watching Lauren Hutton.
I have a lot of different women that I like. It's interesting though -- I'm trying to think about for what my career has been and how it's been all over the place -- because I admire so many women for many different women, I go off in a lot of different directions. I'm a New Yorker, so I feel like I could do anything.
It's hard -- I've never really thought I could emulate anybody, career-wise, but I have such different circumstances, of even how I got into this industry. I didn't want to be an actor. It took me a long time, even while I was acting, for me to realize that that's actually what I was doing.
That was kind of difficult, several years in, realizing 'well, I guess I'm an actor. Allright, I gotta make some choices about this, if I'm really gonna stick here and do this. What do I want this to look like, this career path?
' Because I'm not going for a brass-ring in particular, I don't have this ideal of success that I want to achieve with this. It wasn't my childhood dream -- I wanted to be a marine biologist. So this is quite different.
But I sit there and think about certain people's careers, and it's like, I don't know .. it's an interesting thing, because I look at someone like Jane Fonda, and I'm like 'I can do Barbarella, and I can do comedy and I can do drama, and I can be politically active.
I can be respected on many levels as a woman. All of that is very important to me.
Press: You mentioned Barbarella -- are you interested in the Barbarella remake?
Rosario: I didn't know they were making one.
Press: Rosario, you're reported to be producing Occult Crimes Taskforce -- are you carrying any lessons from this producing experience into that one?
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