Director Andrew Bujalski
If the word “mumblecore” ever meant anything in the first place, it definitely had something to do with Andrew Bujalski. The lo-fi indie director of Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation showed up at the South by Southwest Film Festival with his third feature, Beeswax, in March. We sat down for a beer to discuss the unique qualities of his slice-of-life films, which routinely challenge Hollywood conventions, but still require—to hear Bujalski tell it—an appreciative audience. Beeswax, the story of twin sisters living in Austin amid troublesome relationships at work and at home, opens at Film Forum this Friday.
The cast of Beeswax includes staples of Austin film culture such as SXSW film programmer Janet Pierson and filmmaker siblings Nathan and David Zellner. What's the significance of SXSW and Austin for you?
Obviously, the festival has been very supportive of stuff made outside of the traditional industry. On a purely personal level, to shoot a movie in Austin with a cast mostly from Austin felt great, especially when we packed the theater. To make a film like this, you need hundreds of people to contribute favors of all sorts. To be able to have a lot of them in that room was a thrill.
What was it like to premiere Beeswax at the Berlin Film Festival?
It was a different reaction. I think the SXSW audience is there to have a good time in a way that's not entirely the case everywhere. It definitely played more as a comedy than it did in Berlin. It was like I was watching There's Something About Mary. People were laughing over the next scene. It's a thrill to hear that, but it's certainly not the only valid reaction to the film. That's the thing that's so challenging when people ask me, "How did it go?" I always say, "I don't know."
You know when a screening goes really badly, and you know what a standing ovation is. But between those two poles, you've got a roomful of people who have their own individual experiences of it, so it's not like There's Something About Mary, where you can tell the difference between people knocked out with laughter and those who are not. A quiet audience can still make for a great screening of the film.
Do you aim for an open-ended spectrum of reactions?
Yeah, that's the agony and the ecstasy of it, the life I dream for the films. But it's very hard to calibrate that reaction afterwards. Some people are going engage and others won't find a way into it, which is sad. I wish everyone saw the film and found it instantly accessible, but I've accepted that with the approach I've had on these films, you can have a bad burrito for breakfast and you might not find your way into the movie.
How do you feel about someone going to see one of your movies and expecting a by-the-book comedy?
I think about that now. I try not to think about that when we're making it. But it's harder and harder not to worry about how something gets perceived, although those worries never seem to help me. I try not to think about, "Well, this critic liked my last film, so how can I get him or her to like the next one?" You have to take everything organically and a build a film the way you build it, thinking it through beat by beat, character by character. That's a very personal thing that you put out into the world and hope it will mean as much to somebody as your favorite films have meant to you.
I don't engineer for a mass audience or critics. I think I have an audience in my head. I picture my platonic ideal of a viewer and make it for that person. Every time somebody comes up to me and says they love the film, I definitely want to clone them.
So you pay attention to the reviews.
Yeah, and once you've digested everything you've read, you put it in perspective. If I hear that somebody said I'm an asshole, then that hurts for a day or a week or whatever. A year later, you get perspective on it. It's the same thing when somebody says I'm the savior of cinema. For a day I think, "I'm the savior of cinema." When you're trying to make a project, none of that shit matters. You've got things in front of you to deal with.
The movies are traditionally scripted, but do you think it's beneficial for people to think that they're improvised?
I think it's rarely beneficial for people to think about the conditions under which the film was made. I mean, there might be some situations in which that's productive.
I think we're all naturally inclined to question the conditions under which art gets made. Your work really frequently engages that tendency since it feels so naturalistic.
Sure, but the dream is that you can break through that. Still, I know what you mean. There are a lot of films I've seen where, if it has a magic to it, then I come out going, "How did they do that?" We're probably in a good space if the question is, "How did you do that?" If the question is, "I know how you did that, so confirm my suspicion," then we're probably not in a good space.
