WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1123 - Eliza Hittman / Dan Savage

Episode Date: May 14, 2020

Filmmaker Eliza Hittman talks with Marc about telling the stories of teenagers in ways that feel like the lived experiences of actual teenagers. That’s partly achieved by the naturalistic performances she gets from many non-actors. But it’s also achieved by the sensitivity of her screenplays, like her latest film Never Rarely Sometimes Always, which takes the teen protagonist on an unavoidably real journey. Also, Dan Savage returns to WTF, bringing his expertise in love and relationships to help listeners navigate some of the difficulties of living with other people during lockdown. This episode is sponsored by Patreon, Purple Mattress, and Scotts Turf Builder Triple Action. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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fuck nicks what's happening it's me mark maron this is my podcast wtf big show today no time i was gonna read some emails but we're gonna have to hold on to them we're gonna have to wait it out how's it going man I'm sorry I jumped right in as if everything was okay that's crazy I mean that was just crazy for a minute there I thought that everything was okay and everything was gonna be okay didn't you feel that in my voice when the the parts of your brain that aren't engaged are the ones that are like, oh, I got to be at that. No, you don't. Oh, what time is that?

It's not. Oh, when can we? We can't. So when all that goes away, all I got to do is this. And then figure out who I am. I said it to Cate Blanchett. I'll say it again. Pretty soon, we're all going to be who we are without those things, those external things. I mean, it's like all the social media platforms are becoming this like the death throes of entertainment culture.

People drowning in the great undertow of relevance. Wait, wait, wait. Help. Look at me, but I'm saying a thing. Hello, hello, hello. Is there anybody out there? Hey, look, man. Big show.

Got a little one with Dan Savage. Got on the horn. No, I didn't get on the horn no i didn't get on the horn i did not get on the horn uh we got on he did his side we're on video and then we both did it on on our good mics so that should sound good me talking to dan savage i don't know if you know dan he's been a guest on this show i was just a guest on his briefly we kind of switched it up he's uh he hosts the savage love cast which you can get wherever you get your podcasts or at savagelovecast.com. And then our second guest is Eliza Hittman, who has made several movies, a few features, a few shorts. She seemed to get upset with me that I obsessed about this one short as if it was some weird thing that wasn't meant to be seen.

But her new film, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, is now available to rent on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and most video on demand platforms. Great movie. She's a great filmmaker.

I enjoy talking to her. So those things are happening. I will get you caught up with some shit though first. You know, Lynn's been sick, not with the COVID with something else, some kind of strep thing. And I gotta be honest with you.

I am not what you would call a, I'm not. Okay. I think what I'm trying to say is I'm a reactive caretaker. What I'll fucking let's deal with it. Let's do it. I'll, I'll help out.

What do you need? If it's messy, let's clean it up. If you need something to cook something for, you get you some medicine whatever i i can do all that and and i can be there what i'm not is a nurturing caretaker like i'll show up i'll do this shit but uh you good all right good not even with my cats i think it's some sort of weird inability to sort of open up that way because I feel like I'm just going to break down.

You don't want to make someone else's sickness about you, you know? And obviously this is relevant right now. I mean, so many people are being utterly selfless and altruistic on the front lines of treating these COVID patients. And that's a fucking tough gig. God damn it. I mean, how do you not get cynical and jaded and fucking just obliterated?

A lot of them do existentially, emotionally. I'm just dealing with my girlfriend at home who doesn't have a fatal thing. And, you know, I know enough to where, like, I got to show up. But if I get too open, the nurturing thing. I don't know enough to where like i gotta show up but if i get too open the nurturing thing i don't know if i've got that muscle because i don't know if my parents were more sort of like worrying panicky boundaryless absorbing you know like if you had a problem they'd make it their

problem then we'd all sort of like just like feel that together no separation of states so i got a pretty hard wall to that i'm afraid if i open up i'm just gonna be like you're sick then no what am i gonna do it then it's gonna be i feel bad you're sick but am i gonna get sick and now we're both sick and like so i just gotta be like what do you need yeah i'll make you soup yep no problem soup you want some water you want to here did you take your medicine i can do that but the uh sort of like hey it's gonna be okay you know you're you're doing good you know everything's great um i mean you know you're getting through it but uh it's gonna be fine just get some rest nope it's like all right you're gonna go to bed i think you should get some sleep to drink some fluids not like once you have it how about a little you want a little water no i think

you should drink a little just drink some fucking water you got to drink water it's a different tone but you know the impulse is there and the act the action is there but she's getting better monkey is not great but the same thing with monkey i talk to everybody the same way when they're not feeling well. Hey, monkey, are you dying? Are we dying now? Is that what's happening? Fucking cat, man. It gets to the point of these old cats where every day you're like,

are you going to wake up to a dead cat? Or are you going to wake up to a cat that needs to be taken in to be killed? Or put down to be taken care of? to be killed or put down to be taken care of. I'm actually pretty nurturing when I'm putting an animal down. I don't think I'm, I don't have to put it Lynn down. I don't think I can.

And, and she's not that sick, but, but like when I, when I put Fonda down, I held her and I was crying so I can really open my heart up for that for the

euthanizing but anything up to that it's like are you good what do we need but if it's sort of like it's time okay baby okay baby it's okay it's okay that I can show up for Okay, baby. Okay, baby. It's okay. It's okay. That I can show up for.

You don't want to be alone at that moment. If there's ever a time you don't want to feel alone, it's them. And it's a fucking tragic horror show that so many people can't even have their family with them right now. But again, this is being said a lot, and I don't think it can be said enough. Grateful to the people who are selfless and taking on the job of taking care of humans who are in distress, who are in pain, who are in sickness, who are dying.

Thank fucking God for those people and thank you to those people, all of you. The fact that there's anybody pushing back on that or being obnoxious to those people is a real fucking social cancer, man. Look, Dan Savage has been a radio guy, podcast guy long been a long time he might have been even uh

before us i know he's on radio i'm pretty sure whatever the case you can hear him on his show the savage love cast which he hosts and you can get that wherever you get your podcast or at savage love cast.com i'm actually on his show this week, and this is me and him talking. I wanted to add some questions about what he's hearing from people about sex behavior. This is me and Dan Savage. Are you self-employed? Don't think you need business insurance? Think again. Business insurance from Zensurance is a no-brainer for every business owner because it provides peace of mind. A lot can go wrong. A fire, cyber attack, stolen equipment, or an unhappy customer suing you.

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at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. Dan Savage, how are you? Long time no talk to. I'm really good. How are you? I'm okay. You know, I feel bad that I'm okay a little bit, but I am okay.

Yeah, I feel the same way. There's so many people out there right now who are in much worse shape and I'm very privileged in that my job seems to be stumbling along for the moment. And I live in a big house and so I can be with my partner, but also get the hell away from him while sheltering together. Exactly, exactly. And then you watch the news, and I don't know what's going on. I mean, I think you're in Seattle, right? Yeah, yeah.

Before New York stole the mantle from us, we were the first American epicenter. Yeah, it was leveled. Out here, it's on a day-to-day basis very unclear to me what's happening in LA. I have to check in with it. We live relatively isolated lives here anyways. You know, I was going to say that. Every time I'm in LA, it's just one of those places, it's, it's kind of a desert of, you know, people who live in a desert. You make a nice house for yourself, and it's hard to get anywhere in L.A., and so people tend to stay home.

That's right. And it's like, you know, the difference is that they've closed down my hiking trail. Now we have to wear masks outside. I limit my visits to the grocery to, you know, once every couple of weeks, if we can pull it off. I have my partner here as well, who, you know, Lynn Shelton has been staying at my house and she's got a place of her own too, that we can go to across town. But, but ultimately it's, it's, it's a little, it's still scary because you just don't know, but I, I don't feel the bodies in the streets like New York did, or maybe Seattle did in a way.

Well, I think there's the bodies stacked up at the morgues and on the refrigeration trucks that we have to think about. But increasingly, so many people out of work for such an extended period of time. And with our incompetent federal government bailing out shitty corporations instead of bailing out American citizens as they're doing in Canada where the government isn't throwing money at corporations to buy back their goddamn stocks. They're actually paying people $2,000 a month to comply with stay-at-home orders, making it possible for people to comply with stay-at-home orders and pay their rent and pay their bills. People are increasingly desperate and you can feel the tension rising in Seattle. People are increasingly desperate and you can feel the tension rising in Seattle. Well, you can, I can feel it here too. And then like, I have to figure out how do I talk about my own experience without being, you know, I, I have to be empathetic and aware of what other people's lives look like, which

is important. And also realize that how little, you know, we can do because of the government. They're not, i believe they're not testing on purpose so the number counts look less menacing and i believe that they're encouraging this weird kind of um where's the protest for more tests we got lunatics protesting here to go to the fucking beach and it's crazy the short-sightedness it is crazy and people are you know the protesters who are a lot of MAGA idiots and Trump supporters are you know people who are upset about the lockdown and not everybody's upset about the lockdown uh is a MAGA idiot but the people at those protests definitely

are long gun carrying gun humping MAGA idiots but you know people's anger isn't being directed in the appropriate place which is exactly they're having this lockdown if the federal government had responded in time if the federal government were ramping up testing to the extent that it should be ramped up we could ease these restrictions as they've done in other places right but you know it's just the fucking republicans they don't think government works they want to get elected so they can prove it by monkey wrenching government if the government has they they've we we live in a failed state they succeeded this is exactly exactly a crisis and this is how the republican dream looks in a crisis this is it this is this is this is

hands-on no government uh functioning properly uh you knowled, you know, cronies at the top positions and all the agencies, all the agencies bureaucratically crippled. And this is how it looks. This is the Republican dream we're living right now. Crazy. So I guess my question is for you, because I'd gotten a few emails and I don't really do phone errors and I don't, I'm not really on the pulse. Uh, but you know, I got some, a couple of emails about people addressing, uh, you know, the possibilities and probably I'm, I'm sure that the certainty of, of, uh, an uptick in emotional abuse, domestic abuse, uh, strained relationships, both familial and, uh, uh, and, and, uh, personal with partners. And I imagine that you hear about it because that's sort of part of what your show does.

Yeah, we're getting a lot of calls from people. And what do you find, like, let's start with the, well, why don't we start with the horror show of the sad situations and move into something more upbeat so we have a happy ending to the thing. What are you hearing about abuse? You're seeing a lot of domestic violence calls all over the country.

The police are saying domestic violence reports and calls are way up. And, you know, one of the things that condemns people to endure a relationship with a partner who's abusive is feeling like they have nowhere to go, feeling like there's no escape. And people are now trapped with their abusers even more than they may have been financially or psychologically trapped with their abusers in the past. One of the things we saw in cities,

which have relaxed restrictions in China in particular, after the restrictions were lifted, was a spike in filings for divorce. And I think we're going to see that. I thought you were going to say a spike in flower sales. No, a big spike in filings for divorce. I think we're going to see that here too. And it's not just abusive relationships that people have been enduring and need to get out of or may feel that they can't get out of. and need to get out of, or may feel that they can't get out of. There's a lot of people who are in good enough relationships that are cracking under the strain of imposed constant togetherness.

Right. No, I imagine that's true that, you know, you, you, a lot of relationships kind of make do and you accept the limitations of them and you make your compromises and you kind of get through life with some autonomy. But I imagine once that autonomy goes away completely, you really got to get to know each other. There's no hiding. Right. But the mistake that some people are making is assuming because they can't spend 24 hours a day with a person that they should get out of that relationship or that it's not a good

relationship. There's a small body of research that shows that time apart from each other built into the relationship actually contributes to the health of a relationship and the long-term stability, even up to the people taking separate vacations, people having separate circles of friends that they hang out with away from their partners. And suddenly for a lot of people whose relationships are good and healthy, in part because they're away from each other every day to go to work, or maybe some weekends, I go camping, you stay home, you go out with the girls, whatever. All that's been taken from them and they're together 24 hours a day.

And they're sort of misinterpreting the fact that the relationship doesn't work under those conditions for the relationship doesn't work at all. And I need to get out of it as opposed to, instead of identifying the forced togetherness as an aberration and unnatural, which is what it is. I'm afraid not just, you know, I'm for everybody getting out of shitty relationships they want to get out of and should get out of. I'm worried some people are going to exit relationships that aren't shitty, but that felt shitty during the lockdown. of short-sightedness around the particular situation that we're in that I think people reacting negatively towards lockdown in general are experiencing is that there is a sense of childish entitlement to the American mindset. And I think that to sort of idealize your relationship without contextualizing the fact that you never are going to have to spend that much time with you,

your partner again, ever, if we get through this and it's an anomaly and, you know, the best thing you could do is suck it up and, and kind of, you know, you realize that the shortcomings that are there between the two of you were always there and eventually they will be relieved again. One of the tricks our minds plays on us as humans is whatever the condition we're in at any particular given moment, we can succumb to this kind of bullshit despair that it will always be thus. You know, I think, you know, I used to,

I had an infant once, I'm a parent. You get into this like place of despair sometimes when you have an infant because it's such a grind and the despair is partly sort of fueled by, oh my God, this is the rest of my life right and it's not the kid grows up uh and this is not the rest of our lives being you know locked in you know up in our homes 24 hours a day with our uh romantic partners or roommates or parents whoever it is you're sheltering in place with our kids or kids yeah but i i mean i wonder, is there another side to this where people are learning good things about each other?

Well, hopefully. Hopefully. You know, people don't call advice podcasts or write to advice comments when things are going great. So I hear from people, you know, my sample is always skewed. People don't write me just to say, hey, me and my you know husband had a three-way and it was awesome people write me when they've had a three-way and that shit exploded in their faces so sometimes i think that's why people sometimes think you know never have a three-way because oh my god they always end in disaster well those are the ones you hear about right because the way that becomes a a one way for everybody at the right if your parents had

a three-way and didn't get divorced over it, you never heard about the three-way your parents had. That's right. Right? If they had a three-way and they got divorced, you heard about it. Maybe. Maybe. You heard about it years later from the third one. Hopefully. Here's the other thing I wonder is like, what about all these people that are in relationships? They had things on the side. They had, you know, all that kind of business going on. Someone at work, someone, you know, I mean, I wonder how side. They had all that kind of business going on. Someone at work, someone, you know. I mean, I wonder how, like, because all that shit kind of comes to a grinding hole. I imagine it's a little harder to jerk off to porn, to sex with whoever you're, you know, dealing with, you know, in secret. So all that, all those channels of acting out, you know, are shut down for a lot of people.

Not just acting out. I have this phrase I use all the time, do what you need to do to stay married and stay sane. But sometimes in a multi-decade, long-ass term relationship, cheating is the least worst option. There are people trapped in sexless relationships where their partners, they're financially dependent on each other.

Maybe they have kids with special needs. Just leaving isn't an option. But sexlessness creates so much misery that it creates conflict in the relationship. There are times when you should cheat and stay, right? And for some people who were doing what they needed to do to stay married and stay sane, they can't do that thing that helped them stay sane now and haven't been able to for weeks or months. And maybe they have, you know, this is the unethical non-monogamous we're talking about. There are people out there in ethical non-monogamous relationships who have, you know, secondary partners, sometimes tertiary partners that they can't see right now and haven't seen,

and they miss them and their partners who are not the ones they live with feel like they weren't prioritized or couldn't be prioritized. And that's very sad. But there's also people who, you know, have the piece on the side, the piece from work that didn't just, you know, wasn't just about infidelity, wasn't just about being naughty, was maybe about keeping them sane. And some people are cracking under the lifestyle, you know, in terms of the idea that you can sort of spread yourself emotionally out like that. Like, I think it's something like this where you're like, you start to realize who's, you know, what you prioritize, what the other partners you have prioritize. And I guess there's a certain amount of truth that's going to come out of this. Right. I just got a letter from a woman who has

two boyfriends. She's poly, but both her boyfriends have wives, have primary partners that they live with. So both of her boyfriends are with their wives and she's got nobody, even though she's got two boyfriends. And she's starting to question whether this kind of polyamory was right for her because she's nobody's primary. And if everybody is somebody's primary, then there's really not a lot of space for polyamorous webs of connection. I think it's interesting, man. I mean, that's an interesting thing to kind of realize is how these different types of

relationships that have kind of evolved and been embraced over the last decade or two, how they're going to survive something that is as emotionally taxing as this and people who are in need of just human support who are involved in these complex kind of situations, how are they going to see them once they get out of this? I know people whose romantic relationships are entirely dependent on air travel and they live in one country or on one continent and their partner lives in another and they fly back and forth to see each other free and suddenly frequently and suddenly they can't do that they can't spend one month there and the next month here. They can't take turns going to see each other because there's no getting on planes and flying to Berlin right now.

Wow, yeah. What is the biggest complaint you're hearing? What is the theme of the calls? Oh, my God. The biggest complaint, you're right to say that this has really probably put the most pressure on poly people. The biggest sort of stream of calls have been from poly people i think a lot of people who are in poly relationships and open relationships have sort of been outed by this or suddenly have problems they didn't used to have right because they were they were navigating their poly relationship

successfully suddenly this thing slams into us we're hit by this meteor and they can't you know their pile their relationships you know this web of interconnected romantic sort of ties affiliations is not just strained but but snapped broken of course because a lot of people are hurting because of it well you know there's there's there a sort of, the need situation emotionally is much different when everything is okay and you can manage your shit. But, you know, when all of a sudden, you know, there's a terrifying reality shift and, you know, you're unable to get to people and you're unable to connect that, those deeper needs that, look, I'm not going to pathologize anyone's way of life but i mean those deeper needs that aren't met uh in those situations that are really kind of existential needs are being challenged we can still stay in touch you know if this had hit us 30 years ago uh you know i had a long-distance relationship 30 years ago where we had to send each other

letters via airmail to keep in touch and it could take a week uh now people can get online they can email they can facetime i guess that's true but still you're saying they still snap they do still snap because it's the visit you know we're social animals and we need touch and we need to some extent the physical presence of the people who are important to us, particularly if we have sexual relationships with them. There's only so much jacking off on Zoom that can make up for it. The timing of that's tricky. You know, if you want things to happen at the same time, you've really got to pace yourself.

Well, let's say it's the same for in-person sex, really. The simultaneous orgasm is kind of a myth. But the other, the skill set is different because, you know, when you're with somebody on a Zoom call or however you're doing it, you know, you're watching them, you know, they're watching you. And, you know, to make it sort of lock up and to maintain so everybody happens at the same time,'s it's it's a it's a deeper discipline i think i think so although it is my considered opinion that it's easier to time your orgasms together if you're jacking off online together than if you're actually in the same room with one another that you can pace yourself more easily if you're not sort of juggling somebody else's bits at the same time as your own no i get that i that. I understand. Yeah, you're right. You're right.

It's similar, both sides. But it's about, I think, the thing about the online thing is that, you know, if you want it to end simultaneously, there is a bit of timing there. Getting somebody off when you're with them and then maybe finishing yourself, you know, that's a whole different set of circumstances. But if you don't want to be the guy sitting there in a mess watching someone else finish, you know, there's a trick to it. There is.

There is. Timing is important in so many aspects of our lives, professionally and personally. Okay. So, but what about other stuff? Are you hearing anything about the intimacy becoming too kind of non-sexual because of things at hand that, you hand that people are not able to sort of connect sexually in this situation? Less so that than mismatched libido.

There's a lot of people out there who respond to stress by getting horny, by needing the release. But there are more people who respond to stress by shutting down sexually. And there's some preliminary research done by the Kinsey Institute that shows that the more common reaction to the sort of mass stress and trauma of this moment is people shutting down. And I'm hearing from a lot of people who are the partner who didn't shut down the partner who is reacting to this by wanting to get off, wanting to be horny, wanting to touch,

wanting intimacy. But they are unfortunately partnered with someone, as they've just learned, who responds to mass worldwide trauma by their levitas tanking. Right, by shutting down. Yeah, a relationship that three months ago was sexually compatible is suddenly not, if you add this stress, sexually compatible. Interesting. It's a new problem for many couples.

Right. So now they've got to lean on, you know, I still think that this has got to be revelatory on the emotional connection level. I think people have to be patient. And, you know, I'm literally writing a column right now where I'm talking to a woman about what I call assisted masturbation. It's a little bit like mutual masturbation, but only one person's masturbating. assisted masturbation it's a little bit like mutual masturbation but only one person's masturbating uh you know if you're not horny and your partner is what you know if there's a way you can help your partner out right you know if they can if you can sit on their face and they can rub one out and they're a little happier for the human contact and it doesn't make you feel

used or traumatized for god's sake sit on their face is that the take take one for the team exactly with the expectation that they will take one for the team exactly with the expectation that they will take one for your team perhaps at a later date there may be a time when you're horny and you can call in the favor yeah i think well yeah i mean that makes complete sense yeah you know let me help you out yeah let me help you out yeah how long is it really going to take that's the other thing i think that people forget that like whatever you you think sex time is, maybe, you know, if you're, you know, a real, like, if you're a real duration freak, then, you know, there's, you're looking at an evening or like hours, but for most people you look, it's four minutes, dude. It's seven minutes.

I've never understood. I've, I literally get questions sometimes with people who are mad, but I've never written about tantric sex practices. And'm just i'm not interested in me of all people not interested in sex that lasts six hours i got shit to do yeah i got things to read there's shows i want to watch i don't want to have sex for six hours yeah i mean orgasm right if you can both get i mean because if you get deep and you get intense and you go at it you know and and you're you're you're locked in you know i'd say inside of 15 minutes and that's you know you're locked in you know i'd say inside of 15 minutes and that's you know that's a long that you know that's inside of 15 minutes you could exhaust yourselves beautifully uh and and be done with it for the day yes there are also ways to

make that 15 minutes the culmination of like hours of erotic tension building. That's what the swingers and the BDSMers are particularly good at. Like often BDSM sex is a lot of props and costumes and drama and play, but it still ends up with two people on the floor in the missionary position at the end for the last 15 minutes. So those last 15 minutes can look very similar

to the vanilla person, but there was just a lot more sort of buildup. I think that most people do that without labeling it, Dan. I think that non-BDSM people are doing that through passive aggression and just harboring resentment. I think that's just called life, what you just said. It's only without costumes, and they may not know it. But whatever pissed you off that morning and however you handled it throughout the day, if you weren't too abusive, the sub is going to end up getting fucked. It's just the BDSMers are intentionally building up that stress.

Right. Whereas the rest, other people are just rolling with it. Living their cranky lives, repressing their feelings, and resolving it sexually at the end of the day. Yep. Well, this has been helpful. I hope so. Yeah, and you're doing okay?

Yeah, we're good. We're hanging in there and we're constantly, you know, when we're stressed out, reminding ourselves that there are people in much worse straits than we are. We're employed and we have a roof over our heads and we have plenty of food and we're trying to help out people that we can help out where we can. But man, we need a revolution. We need a new federal government. Yeah, you know, it's one of those things where I feel the same as you, and I am trying to do what I can where I can and in a way that I can from where I'm sitting. But it's one of these weird pauses where, like, as we were talking before, outside of the plague and the hardships that people are going through, to see the natural environment, to see bears coming back to Yosemite and porpoises showing up places that they weren't in years, and people who live in cities seeing mountains for the first time, that you would really hope that collectively there was some sort of global environmental wake up call as well as we come out of this. But I don't hold on to a lot of hope for that, sadly.

And I do hope that you're correct. I hope that some governmental changes, that enough people have their anger focused in the right direction and were frightened enough because of the lack of security that was provided by our government, the total mishandling and no support visible, that they're able to see that clearly. I hope so. But the Republicans seem to always be better at- Tapping people's anger. Tapping into people's anger. And people are angry. And if anything they can do to stoke anger and then harness it, they are willing to do. There's no low they will not sink to in the pursuit of power. And, you know, I despair of the Democrats because all too often Democrats, you know, if Dems had power, more good would be done with it. But the will to power isn't there.

And the constant badgering of Democrats into the belief that what Democrats are in D.C. to do is to set a good example for Republicans as opposed to wrest power from Republicans and then do some good with it. Yeah. And enact policy that is actually helpful and somehow make it understandable to people that don't seem to really care or realize they're getting fucked. Right. And make it simple. No more Rube Goldberg contraptions like Obamacare. Single payer. Make it simple so people can understand it and they'll be less afraid of it. Yeah. For some reason, the misunderstanding of the word socialism, especially for people who are actually getting checks. Benefiting from the socialism light we do around the edges.

Yeah. Then they're the angry ones. But we'll hope for the best and and and thanks for talking to me man hey thanks for having me back on it was a real pleasure that was uh me and dan savage talking about the stuff sex stuff eliza hitittman is my guest, and I love her work. I didn't know her work. I watched her most recent film, Never Rarely, Sometimes, Always. Then I went and watched her other two features, which were spectacular, very raw, very intimate movies, and very kind of human, man. Human Man. And I watched the short and I kind of got hung up on the short because I was trying to understand how she approached filmmaking. But I think she got annoyed that I kept bringing up the short film that she was like, I don't want to put it. I did that a long time ago. I was practicing. I understand that. But, you know, I thought there was something there. Anyways, her movies, most of that, I watched all them but uh the the new one never rarely sometimes always is now available to rent on amazon prime video apple tv and most

video on demand platforms uh as are her two other ones and you can find the short i believe online anyways i'm a big fan and i think she's a a great. This is me talking to Eliza Hittman. Just now before this thing, I watched the short Forever's Gonna Start Tonight. So now I'm very up on you. I've watched most of the big work. Thank you. Thank you for going back that far. I'm slightly embarrassed.

Are you? A little bit, yeah. Why? Oh, I don't know. I think short films, you know, are really, you know, learning experiences and in some ways kind of a chance to experiment. And I don't know. I don't know how I feel with them being out in the world necessarily. But that's the way you kind of have to.

They have to be out in the world. It's not like, you know know it's not like a musician's kind of uh demo tape necessarily it's more like a way you get attention yeah in a broader sense from the business even though it is not obviously you know the end of the the quality of work you're going to do yeah it's kind of like opening up a high school yearbook oh my god yeah a little bit and being like yeah here i am at this point in life but it's but it's weird because you know speaking of high school it seems that most even going back that far that thematically you know what you're exploring has maintained pretty steady teenagers teenage trauma yeah it's well i, what it seems that at least that film and the the first two, It Felt Like Love and Beach Rat are like familiar locations to you or something.

I mean, like they all seem to be around the same kind of beach neighborhood. Where is that? I think it's like kind of a pocket of neighborhoods that all sort of overlap that are on the edge of Brooklyn. Like Coney Island? Is it down by there? Sheepshead Bay, Graves End, Beach Rats was Sheepshead Bay. The term Beach Rats, it describes a kid that's from Garrettson Beach. And they live right on the water. You grew up in that area?

I grew up in Flatbush, which is sort of in the middle of Brooklyn, but 15 minutes from those neighborhoods. How did you grow up? I would never say the work that I make is autobiographical. It captures the essence of an experience and a community and an environment. But what was your Brooklyn upbringing like?

My father is an academic, and he teaches at Long Island University, or retired. He taught at Long Island University, and he's from the Lower East Side. My father is kind of a poor Lower East Side Jew who grew up in a tenement. poor Lower East Side Jew who grew up in a tenement. My mother is from Borough Park, Brooklyn, which is another sort of Jewish neighborhood. The type of Jews, though, that not like we're going to make a buck no matter what, but they put the premium on education and service.

Yeah. So there's the two kinds of Jews, the kind of bullying business Jews. I would say my family is a mix of both. We definitely have some criminals in the family. I mean, look at my last name. So it's a mix. But both have equal status. But both have equal status. So there was some connected people, some people that were a little shady in the hitman clan?

Yeah, definitely. My father's brother was a little bit of a character. Oh, that's how we say it in the family, right? He's a character. He's a character with an interesting past. Uh-huh. But yeah. Is he still around? No, he's not. It's a long story.

I don't know how you were brought up specifically, but I mean, I was sort of surprised for some reason. Like when I was younger and I was in like early in college, I got a job at a deli in like one of the last real Jewish delis in the Boston area. And for some reason, I guess I had really kind of put it in my head, the Jewish exceptionalism thing. I don't know why I never really thought growing up in New Mexico or that, you know, Jews were cops and boxers and mafia people. And that like there was this whole other world of Jews

that were definitely borderline criminals. And it's all in the history there. But I remember there was a moment when I started meeting these characters where I was like, I didn't know there were Jewish plumbers. How is there a Jewish plumber? But of course there were.

And it was so limited in my thinking to not think that there were Jewish criminals considering the mob was half invented by Jews. You know, we have some Lanskis in my family and we have some hitmen. Really? You got some of the Lanskis? No, no, no. But I mean, they must be connected somewhere. Yeah, yeah. But no, not no direct connection that you know of. No. So what was your father's, what did he teach?

My father taught anthropology. Uh-huh. And did you find that interesting? I did. My father had a very focused career, and he studied a group of Native Americans in northern Nevada called the Paiutes. And he wrote a few books. One book is called Wovoka, which is about this very kind of Jesus figure in Native American culture. in Native American culture.

And I spent a lot of summers as a child on a reservation in Northern Nevada watching him do field work and document a language. I actually made my first, first short film on the reservation with the Paiutes. And yeah, that one is called Trickster. And that's kind of inspired by Native American mythology. Was the trickster a troubled teen? It was a kid.

It was a little kid, you know, in Native American tradition, trickster. There are all these stories about trickster and its sibling wolf. And one gets into trouble and one gets the other out of trouble. Into trouble and one gets the other out of trouble. And I worked with two kids on this reservation, a boy and his sister, his real sister. And it's a story about a little, you know, trouble that this kid gets into and his older sister who covers it up for him. But not too menacing? Not too menacing.

Not too menacing. Innocent. not too menacing not too menacing innocent i i think that that's another interesting thing about the through line of all your work is that it's innocent trouble a lot of it you know and and that there is sort of like i found myself like i didn't i don't want to get to this part of my thinking yet on this but that there there's a menace that, as a viewer, you bring to these stories, that you put on these stories, that is programmed into us. And I'm curious about whether or not it's an intention that you have in terms of expectation when teenagers are in risky situations. But do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I think that I, you know, in the script writing process, I'm very conscious and working to achieve a certain kind of tension with the audience experience. And a lot of that tension

is in, you know, the audience watching a young person putting themselves through very vulnerable situations. And it's about building the relationship between the audience and the character so that we, as an audience, kind of watch in horror. Right, but the horror there, it's multi-leveled. In all the movies, the features that you've done. It's there. And like the question that's sort of interesting because of the relief of the tension is usually like, oh, these kids aren't evil rapist murderers.

They're just kind of kids. And but there is a tension in all of them where because of your expectation, because of exploitive news or whatever you're bringing to it, you're like, oh, now she's going to get killed. Oh, now he's going to get killed. Oh, now they're going to get raped. And I don't know that, I don't think that's, obviously, if you look at the numbers, the percentage of that happening is much less than the percentage of just somebody going through some natural kind of creepy rites of passage that they can recover from, as opposed to something violent and awful right but but we bring to it this weird baggage of information and there's a suspense

element to it that i understand you're building tension but do you want us to think they're going to get killed at every turn no not necessarily um i, you know, they're kind of ordinary characters. Right. You know, going through these ordinary rites of passage like you're talking about. And I think that their worlds, the worlds around them are constructed to be slightly unpredictable and unknowable. And that, to me, is very true to life. Right. But you know what I'm talking about,

that there is an expectation when a teenager walks into the woods with an older man that something could go horribly wrong. It could. It's a sordid sort of curiosity. And I realized watching your films that that is a sad bit of baggage that we take from exploitive journalistic culture that, you know, the assumption is always the worst in in in those situations that you can't take a walk in the woods anymore because there's more killers out there than there are bears, you know, like that kind of thing. killers out there than there are bears you know like that kind of thing but it's not really true you know so i guess that was something i learned about myself in watching your movies that you

want to you know place this this sort of um because like the weird thing is in when the female characters in in some of the movies you know enter male situations where you're like oh this is where we're going to see the toxic, horrendous nature of teenage boys. But it's really like it always just comes to a limit where you're like, oh, they're not bad. They're just shitty. Yeah, I think that's an accurate description of the high risk situations that my characters knowingly put themselves into. Yeah. And are, you know, thrilling and scary at the same time.

So when you're out there in Nevada, like I grew up in the Southwest, like you're kind of dealing with your father, the anthropologist. Like I didn't know that. I guess that's how anthropology works. You know, you get a job at whatever college it is. And then, you know, you've got your your little lifetime of study focused on one or two things. Is that how it works generally? That's how his career went. And, you know, writing encyclopedias and squirreled away in a little study in our house.

Yeah. With so many books that I wonder if he's ever read. Back to, you know, my Brooklyn family, I would say also, you know, my mom dedicated her whole life to running an outpatient mental health facility in Brooklyn that was part of a, you know, state hospital. So I think that I had these two very strong influences growing up, you know, somebody who, you know, is, you know, bringing home these stories, you know, of, you know, these, you know, really tragic patient lives. And at the same time, you know, my father, who's kind of studying culture and communities, so psychology and culture and communities, I guess, you know, is the dialogue that I grew up in. Do you feel, did you feel yourself absorbing it at the time? Or is this

something you're kind of looking back and putting together? No, I was always very intrigued, you know, with my mother's work and, you know, human behavior and why people do the fucked up things that they do. Yeah. You know, especially like in my own personal life, like whenever I would have friends and go through like friend drama, you know, my mother was very much like a counselor to me, I would say. Right, right. Sure. Why are they acting like this? Why, you know, kind of get to the diagnosis. Sure. And did you find that there was some sort of repetition of incidents that were thematic for you or just standard fare?

I think standard fare. Yeah? Yeah. I think standard friend drama fare. So you never had that trip of like, you know, like I always felt a little different than other people or that kind of thing? I don't know. I don't know.

Oh, really? You haven't done that type of self-examination? I don't know if it went so deep, the self-examination with my mother. Oh, right. But for you personally, like, you know, your discomfort as a teenager must inform something. I mean, that's your oeuvre. Yeah. Yeah. It does, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, it does, I'm sure. It's a little embarrassing to discuss, perhaps. Oh, really? Is it?

I don't know. All I know is that I was trying awfully hard. You know, more than anything else, more than particular trauma, that my need for connection and my need to be part of certain groups or to be friends with specific people was sort of all consuming to the point of, I think of a site, a type of desperation, which I think I see in, in, you know, a couple of your characters for sure that their need to, you know, to connect despite what their own feelings might be was more important, uh, than honoring their own feelings because they didn't know how to manage them. I think, you know, kind of loneliness and desperation and inarticulateness. But loneliness around people, which is the worst kind. Yeah, I think those things are sort of, you know, drawn from my own experience. Not so much even always as a teenager, but as an adult, I think I definitely infuse those stories

with, you know, feelings that I have in that, you know, in the moment of writing them. Sure. It's not all a reflection. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I know. I don't, I don't imagine that. I'm not trying to impose that. I tried doing that with songwriters. I assume that all songwriters wrote songs about themselves, but it turns out, no, they make up things. I think also like, I think it's like a female filmmaker. There's always a little pressure,

like especially when you're being interviewed, that work, that people always assume work is like diaristic or, you know. Oh, really? Whereas I don't know if people make those assumptions as much about male filmmakers. Women have to write about what they know and it has to like be intimate and all of those things. And I think that the expectations, you know, men write about the world and women write about their feelings. Yeah. I wonder, I guess that's true. I guess maybe I would have to really think about that.

But I think my direct experience with your work is not so much in relation to other female directors, but just thematically teenagers and the sort of struggles that they have, you know, seem to me. And the fact that, you know, they were sort of set in places that that seem were familiar to you. But but but I will definitely check myself in that department. I'm not trying to make you self-conscious. It's just my own observation. That's probably true. There is an expectation for me in a way to reveal, you know. Oh, really?? Oh yeah. Huh. Well, that's interesting because like, you know, I don't know that I would see you in the characters, but you, you know, uh,

but, but there is sort of, um, nah, I don't know. Uh, may, I, I mean, it sounds like you're correct cause you're obviously doing all these interviews, but now I'm just thinking about myself. Cause I think that your films more more than anything, make me think about myself, because you do leave a lot of space. And, you know, to kind of get to know these characters emotionally in both as talking and just being, that my relationship with them in the movies becomes sort of a personal event somehow, which I think is good. Yeah, I think always my hope with making them is that, you know, they resonate with adult audiences, you know,

regardless of where they are in life, you know, either as a reflection of their own youth or, you know, reflection of them, what they're feeling in that moment. Even I think that there's something about, you know, I think that there's something about, you know, honest films about young people that can be about more than just that specific, you know, that being in quarantine where daily routine and any sort of daily sort of patterns are disrupted. So now, like, I find that I'm sort of painfully left to myself. And then you start going through stuff. And then I'm starting to look at old pictures or think about my life. So watching your films in this situation puts me in direct sort of, you know, confrontation with the mildly or more than mildly traumatic events of my teen years and sort of because they're defining things.

So what was it about? So your mom was dealing with like real mentally ill people, right? And she would like tell you about like the struggles they were having, like schizophrenics and whatnot. Yeah. I think I was always very curious. How can you not be? Yeah. About the reality, you know, of dealing with people who have, you know, essentially lost their minds and been institutionalized and come back out into the real world and the work that she would do in helping them try and, you know, find some sort of normalcy after what had happened. And were you ever afraid you were going to lose your mind?

Always. Yeah? Sure. Isn't it the scariest thing that could happen? I don't know. It's absolutely the scariest thing that could happen i don't know it's absolutely the scariest thing that could happen and i used to like i actually when i was younger and using drugs i had this weird rule for myself that if i ever lost my mind i would stop doing drugs like you would know that um because aren't you a little crazy to begin with to be doing that kind of stuff, but. And to be pushing it that far.

Right. Well, that was the thing. It was this weird quote from Thomas McGuane that like, it used to just, it stayed with me forever. And it was like, the mind is not a boomerang. If you throw it too far, it will not come back. And I was like, yeah, man, got to be careful how far I throw it. How do you, when you think about losing your mind, how does that manifest itself? What's your concern? I think, yeah, maybe my fears are more about like just pent up anger kind of. Ooh. Yeah. Like you're just going to rage out. Yeah.

That would be, that would be my version of losing it. Do you feel like you're constantly simmering at some sort of low broil of anger? Filmmaking is stressful. Well, where'd you go? What was the education process? So you come from this very intellectual and engaged family. Did you know you wanted to be a filmmaker early on? No, I didn't. I didn't grow up in a house with a video camera. I wasn't like a kid who was gravitating to this camera. I didn't self-document, none of it. But I did grow up doing theater. And I went to a big public arts

high school in the middle of Brooklyn called Edward R. Murrow. And I, you know, I was always interested in storytelling and I was always interested in theater and acting and, you know, all of that. That's always been my life in a way. So did you, so you were an actress in college or in high school? In high school, yeah. You know, I have, like, I guess I had like kind of one, one moment of realization as a little kid. I was, I was very just like dyslexic.

And I don't know if I was ever really diagnosed really diagnosed what the issue was, but in elementary school, and I hated reading. Yeah. And one day during lunch, all of my friends had disappeared friends during lunch, I have to go in the library, which was this, you know, intimidating place for me, which made me feel, you know, like inadequate. So I went in the library and I joined this group to, you know, hang out with my friends and we all had to pick a book and memorize it. And then we had to perform these stories in front of the school. And it was like a kind of a New York City competition. And I remember getting up on stage in front of the school and I told this little story and everybody laughed and was totally engaged. And it was like a moment of, you know, just like positivity for in a school setting.

And, you know, I made everyone laugh. Nice. And that was like the moment for me, I think that, you know, that I could hold an audience's attention right in you know telling a dramatic little story and I kept winning all these little competitions in New York in storytelling in storytelling as a as an elementary school student um so yeah that that was the beginning and then I kind of always have found a way to do it in various at various points in my life like wherever I've been so I wasn't a filmmaker you know until my late 20s but I feel like I've kind of always been involved with a production but like storytelling like

because like I've I ask people like I don't know how old you are but I mean I ask people, like, I don't know how old you are, but I mean, I ask people. I'm 40. Oh, 40. But obviously storytelling was a thing. Like, I don't remember the word storytelling or storytelling being a thing culturally. Yeah, it's recent. I think it kind of picked up, but that's what it was called around New York City. Right.

Kind of picked up. But that's what it was called around New York City. And if you were from the city of a certain era, you know, you would know what those competitions were. Right. But it was like it would have been like you were the first. It would have been around the time you were coming into it, I guess, that it really started to appear culturally. And do you like and you would just tell like, what's the structure? What, did it become sort of a thing with you? Like the moth where, you know, you would construct and write and memorize different stories? No, you would pick a book. It was about reading and,

you know, literacy. So you tell a story as you tell a story based on the book? Yeah. Memorize the book. Oh, okay. Yeah. And then in high school, you did more regular acting or no? Yeah, I did acting. I went to this like incredible public arts high school where the vision for the high school, you know, was that there would be no sports teams. And that all of the public, you know, all of the funding would go into different arts programs. Genius. Yeah. And there were some interesting alumni like Darren Aronofsky went there.

Oh, yeah. Marissa Tomei. Oh, yeah. And a few others. So it had a little bit of a legacy. Those are good ones. Yeah, yeah. Where'd you go to college at?

I went to college at Indiana University, and I studied theater. In Bloomington? Yeah. You were in Bloomington for four years? I was in Bloomington for four years. I've been there a lot. Yeah, it's a good place. Yeah, there's something kind of freaky about it.

I mean, because I know there's like the deeply dug in sort of college town element, but the fringy kind of local element of it is fucking intense. There's a darkness to it. Definitely. There's a, you know, there's KKK on the outskirts of it. Yeah. And yeah, it doesn't have, you know, there's a lot of tension, class tension. Yeah, I feel it. Every time I'm there, I'm sort of like, what is really going on here?

But you did theater, all theater for four years? All theater, all theater. And I went to grad school at CalArts. For? For film. That's when it started. That's when it started. You just decided after four years of theater and high school storytelling that it was going to be movies.

Was there a movie that made you do that? I guess I met an MFA student from Columbia University and he was working on his thesis film. And I remember seeing it and being like, why haven't I ever tried this right you know and why did I always assume you know that this was too complicated or too hard and that I didn't have the skill set is that what you assumed I assumed it seems you know, it seems... Daunting? Yeah. Yeah, I can understand that, yeah. But were you like a film person? I watched a lot of movies. I would never have called myself like a cinephile.

No. No. You know, I grew up in New York, so I saw a lot of independent film, and I had access to a lot of independent film. And then when did you make the first, uh, short? I made, so each year at Cal arts, I made a short, um, forever is going to start tonight is my thesis film. And then, uh, a year or so after I graduated, um, I made, it felt like love, which is,

you know, a micro micro budget movie. Um, and I guess I shot that in i want to say 2012 and i graduated in 2010 so two years yeah two years after i graduated so you really started you know focusing and you were like this is this is going to be the life yes so how did you get into this zone of Brooklyn filmmaking? No naturalized performances. You know, like the one thing that kind of stays true through the, all the films that I saw was you're able to, you know, pull very kind of natural and, you know, deep performances out of these kids. Are they actors? Mix. They're all, each film has kind of a mix of first time actors and people with experience.

I think, you know, I think the sort of performative style, you know know that's in my films it's a combination you know between me sort of resisting the type of performance that you know I would have worked to achieve on the stage in a way you know if there's something there's an intimacy that I'm trying to achieve that couldn't be achieved in theater. Yes. And then I think also there's, you know, a lot, you know, CalArts had a lot of influence over the type of filmmaker that I am. Yeah. Like from because of teachers or? Because of the sensibility of the program.

Which was? Which was? You know, I think that there was an emphasis on, you know, more kind of European auteur driven cinema and less of an emphasis on Hollywood filmmaking. For sure. Right. And, you know, those kind of styles of working. And when you were studying that stuff, like who was like making the biggest impression on you? I don't know if there was any one, but, you know, an amalgam. Obviously, you know, I was very interested in Brisson.

Okay. Yeah. Robert Brisson and, you know, sort of the way in which he works and he works a lot with kind of non actors. He calls them actor models. you know, sort of the way in which he works. And he works a lot with kind of non-actors. He calls them actor models. You know, I think for me, you know, what was most exciting about leaving the black box was being out in the world and being able to work with real locations and, you know, being able to kind of move away

from a certain kind of process that existed in the theater and being able to work with real people was really exciting. I think it was, you know, a way in a way to divorce myself from, you know, this other creative process and identity. Yeah, it's almost like the opposite of the black box yeah the way you approach filmmaking i think part of the reason also like i never stage in my films like a master shot or like a really perfect pristine wide shot is because to me that's theater interesting yeah because you're right up on everybody you can

we don't need to set the stage yeah you know to show the production design to show where the entrances and exits are you know and i'm trying to sort of break that language and be much closer and much more aligned with the character that I'm focusing on. Right. And you can feel that like you don't even see whole rooms very often in your films. No, I don't really care. I always warn production designers about that. Like you've seen my movie, you know, we're not gonna. Yeah. Just this corner, just the corner's good. Yeah. Over here by the chair. But at the same time, of course, it's really important to me that the room feel credible,

you know, and that we can be facing whatever way we need to be facing and not, and that the actor can move in a fluid way. And we're not, one side of the room isn't empty and the other side is dressed you know right right we want the space to feel 360. I think that you definitely feel that and this is the type of movie obviously that you didn't invent but you know to subvert or get rid of or work around or destroy Hollywood expectations is great because it makes you sort of like assess the humanity of the thing. Right. So what's the writing process? How do you work a scene? I mean, what do you stop yourself from doing outside of, you know, having a nice finale to a story?

I think each one is a little different. It felt like love. Initially, I'd written a short film because I didn't think I had the resources to make a feature. And I was kind of desperate to sort of make something. And the short film was all about this character, Lila, who is at a party and is really desperate to feel like somebody desires her. Right. That was it, huh? That was it.

It was all her desperate attempts at this one little party in the middle of the summer. And then when it didn't go the way that she planned or she had hoped, she goes home and she sort of experiments with the dog and I liked the character and I thought it was funny and she amused me and I wrote that script really you know in a very kind of fluid, episodic way. I didn't know how to write a feature. I was like, I'm just going to keep putting this character into more and more situations.

When I was in high school, we did know this kid named Sammy who was desperate to have sex with 21 girls by his 21st birthday. Yeah. So I was like, oh, what if I put this character, Lila, with this vague idea of this kid we used to know? Yeah.

And have her pursue him and what would happen? And that was sort of what I asked myself. And I just wrote a lot of episodes with her, I asked myself and I just wrote a lot of like episodes with her knowing, you know, that I was leading, you know, to do, you know, a dark or unfulfilling attempt. Well, that yeah, I really like that film, but it seems like you you kind of I imagine that you're pretty proud of that. You don't look at that like the same as you look at your shorts right yeah that i that movie um was such a you know kind of personal triumph for me because we really made it with very little and you know at the time when i you know had shot the film like all these micro budget movies

were coming out um that focused on a certain narrative, you know, people who post liberal art school who moved back to New York and are trying to define themselves, you know, in, you know, in a certain world in a certain, you know, with a certain background. And I was just really thinking about how can I take that micro budget model, but do something that feels more true to me and, you know, the way that I work. And yeah, you know, we really, we made it with like six people and we rounded up a bunch of high school students and, you know, there there was no sag and there were no unions and it was just my dp and a camera and me and a sound person and it was very liberating so working so those were all non-actors for the most part or well gina persanti who um is the

lead she had done other student films she hadn't um she hadn't had like a lead in a feature before and everybody else largely were first-time actors i cast some kids from my high school which was fun i went back to the theater department and said you know can i audition all of the the kids that are there and they said sure information and um and I also worked with a casting director. I tend to like have very long casting processes and try and see as many people as I can. I'm not, um, I'm very open-minded about casting when the process begins and through seeing people, I begin to sort of hone in on what will be most successful.

And then I also cast some kids from a park. I did some street casting on my own. Oh yeah. For that first one. Yeah. That's how I had, that's where the Sammy's friends came from. Oh yeah.

Yeah. They were, they were good. And like what, it seems like all the in all the films there's sometimes it's revealed earlier than later but there's this kind of uh death hanging over these characters and i don't know what happened in the newest one, but there's absence there of, of, uh, of at least a real parent. What is that theme for you? Where does that come from? Um, I grew up in a house with a lot of illness, you know, and, and, um, that was sort of, you know, part of my experience. Like what? Someone was sick in the house yeah my my mother had three

rounds of you know breast cancer two rounds of breast cancer one round of like uterine ovarian cancer um and was a bit you know absent and i had you know my father was very you know much consumed with her illness yeah and they were you know not absent in a way but obviously you know yeah yeah definitely by you know fear and you know impending yeah mortality yeah and so emotionally, it was taxing. That makes sense. I think it's also part of the coming of age tropes that I like to play with and experiment with and subvert. You know the sort of parental figure who's died or dying is a common

one in coming of age films oh is it okay yeah yeah um you know it's it's in every disney movie and oh i i don't know if i realized that no kidding so and and how do they usually handle it usually it's the crisis that starts the story, you know, like, I don't know, finding Nemo. Oh, right. Right. Just,

you know, something that's, I think, you know, part of the way we think about stories about youth. Yeah. That's been informed in me. So the newest movie is,

it was all set to be what, what happened with that movie? Because I know this was one of those quarantine situations where everything shut down. Yeah. You know, we premiered at Sundance and then we went to Berlin and then we were about to open in theaters when people began to be told to shelter in place.

And we opened in the Angelica and the arc light. And then three days later, the theaters closed. Oh. And, you know. Now millions of more people can see it if they want to. Well, I hope so. I hope so. We'll see.

Well, it's called Never Rarely, Sometimes, Always. And it's a different landscape for you. We're in Pennsylvania I think yeah I I was trying deliberately to get out of New York get out of the Brooklyn Beach area yeah and it's not a summer movie it's a winter movie it was like I have to do something different the town that we shot in is called Shemokin and it's part of like a coal mine a cluster of coal towns and i didn't i didn't really get to spend the time there because you know so much of the story is about them leaving and going to new york but it is a very dark little coal town that's cut off

from the rest of the state you know and you know, you know, what we call like Pensatucky, the Pensatucky region. Um, but yeah, I chose the town and, um, you know, I went to pregnancy care centers in that town and sort of researched, you know, what, what it would be like to go through the counseling process as a pregnant teenager. The Christian counseling process. Yeah. And that's all that was available in some of those places?

Yeah, there's one in every town. That type of a clinic that presents itself as a place where you can go to resolve whatever issue, but it's pretty specifically geared towards you keeping the baby for Jesus. Yeah, it's very anti-abortion and not subtly at all Christian and run by volunteer women who have no medical licenses, but, you know, seem to think they should be practicing medicine. Right. And, you know, unfortunately, federally subsidized. Right. And I think that the way you handle all that, you know, because, you know, this is a movie about a teenage girl who has to to make a choice about, you know, her pregnancy is is like it doesn't ever ring like you're hammering something over the head or trying to make a statement.

It just is what it is, you know, and then through resourcefulness and through the support of her friend, or is it her cousin? Both. Yeah. They kind of planned this journey to the big city. Whatever the struggle is, whatever you're suggesting, however the way you handled why she was pregnant and left that a little bit open, that must have been a pretty big story decision you know it was one it was a decision i made before i started writing it almost that you weren't you weren't going to really give you know uh you weren't going to hang it on anybody no um i guess like you know i i was doing all this research on what people insensitively call abortion tourism.

And I really thought that the journey that all these women take all over the country and all over the world, it's so heroic. And it requires so much persistence. And of course, there's so many obstacles along the way. And I knew that it was, you know, a woman's story. Yeah. And that she was alone with the burden of what she was dealing with. Cause I think so many women are, and we pay,

we place the onus and responsibility on the woman. So why, why is this, why is the man of any relevance in a way in the movie that I'm telling? Right. But, is the man of any relevance right in a way in the movie that i'm telling um right but but also like even just the hint of suggestiveness around the possibilities like i don't want to spoil anything for anybody is like to implicate everybody around her in a way right right but you know so that you know that is sort of beautiful and the it's sort of where the title comes from, is in a series of questions that she's asked at a real clinic.

Yeah. Yeah. But it's one of those things where these two kind of country girls, in a way, or Pennsylvania girls, young, they go to Port Authority. Everyone who's been to new york or who's spent any time there knows that fucking place and you know and right away you're like oh god this is going to be trouble so like there's that menace again you know and it and it's it just sort of hangs there and then the one kid they meet is kind of doofy but you know he's a decent

hearted kid you know like you know, but there's still that thing where you're waiting, like, this is where it's going to get bad. But it just it just rides that line, you know. But I think like the way you resolve tension, like like right after that happens the second day, you know, they're just eating at that Chinese bakery again and they're laughing and they're teenage girls again. And they're laughing. And they're teenage girls again. And that's that. And then it goes behind you. And then they're on the bus.

I mean, that's the way that really plays out a lot of times, isn't it? Yeah. For me, I thought of it like kind of an everyday hero's journey. Yeah. Right. Yeah, but there's something about the elasticity of... After the adventure, you kind of have to go home. Right, Yeah. But there's something about the elasticity of after the adventure, you kind of have to go home. Right. Right. And but you also have to have a couple laughs with your friend and eat.

Like you just there's a return to whatever that normal is. And there's that I don't know why I want to say elasticity to or to the teenage spirit, because there's so much they don't know. Yeah. When we talked about that scene um it's one of the few scenes in the film where they improvised actually you know whatever they say about the sweets like you know that it's greasy but good and it's the one of the few scenes that it kind of let them be themselves and it was because i wanted the feeling like you're saying, that their kind of daily life was coming back after this ordeal. Right. Yeah, I just thought it was so well played by everybody, by both them and the kid, too, the boy. I thought he was good. Where'd you find these people?

All over. The boy, he's an actor. His name is Theodore Pellerin, and he's from actually Montreal. And he's been in a lot of incredible things and will be in a lot more incredible things. And the lead of the film is this, you know, young aspiring musician named Sid Sydney Flanagan. And I met her producing another movie in Western New York, like when she was 14 and the film that we were working on, I was producing it. It was called Buffalo Juggalos. And it was a kind of performative piece with juggalos, performative film with juggalos. a performative film with Juggalos and Sydney

was dating a Juggalo so we added her on Facebook thinking she might want to be in the movie at some point but she kept kind of turning up in my Facebook feed because she was posting all these videos of herself playing music

and when we were casting the film Never Rarely I was like, we have to ask this girl to audition because I think she's interesting. Oh, and that's how that went. Yeah. So she had never done a film before. Um,

and Talia, who plays her friend cousin is an aspiring actress and this is her first film, but she had done Broadway. Actually. She's a kid and she had done matilda oh okay she's great yeah they were great well i i really uh appreciate the work and i really uh got a lot out of watching the movies and also like okay let's just like help me out in terms of intentions. Okay. So just in the short, like this is a simple idea of film language. And I don't know how necessarily to put it.

Because you are, I think, a poetic filmmaker. There's a lyrical element to it and there's a emotional flow to it and it it does operate outside of any kind of manipulative narrative or or happy ending or or or regular closure right so like just in turn in the just in the simplicity of that first short forever is going to start tonight you made a choice to have her bring, I can spoil that one, it's old. But you made a choice for her to take those cats and put them on the peach.

Like that's the final thing. Like after this night of a regular sort of weird, drunky, sexy teen night, and you set this up at the beginning that the landlady only wants her dad to have two cats and he's got a litter of kittens up there but the last thing she does is just go abandon these cats like what did that mean to you why did you do that well you know i i you know, her sort of taking responsibility for him in a situation where he was helpless. And, you know, when I was thinking about the script and about to shoot it, I was like, well, she could either dump them on the street, you know, or she could bring them back to this place.

And there's also that element of it's sort of heart-heartening. Yeah, it's a tough transformative moment for this young woman. Her dad was incapacitated? I don't know if I picked that up. He was. I don't want to talk about this short. I'm just kidding. I get embarrassed talking about it and thinking about it. Yeah. He's old, you know, he's helpless and, you know, he.

Okay. Well, I'm sorry. I don't mean to make you talk about it. I just, cause I, I thought it was a very pure kind of like, you know, that, that there's, you make decisions like that are provocative, you know to scene decisions you know that are unique in that they don't you don't know how the story is going to go or or what is important about the story because like if you really to pitch out the stories of these movies you know they would do a disservice to the film itself right so i just thought it was a way to isolate one of those

decisions that you made creatively that i think you still make uh that that affected me in a certain way because I like cats so that's all I think yeah I think it's you know an emotional decision a visual decision yeah yeah uh you know you know it was about her reflecting on this sort of moment in this night yeah because I think they happen throughout your films, don't you? I mean, I think that's the way you kind of think. Like, and I don't know if it's, you know, it's obviously your creative process,

but it's unique in that it does seem to come from left field, but it makes complete sense. You know what I mean? I hope so. I hope so. No, I love it.

But it was great talking to you. I hope I didn't make you uncomfortable in any way. No, I love it. But it was great talking to you. I hope I didn't make you uncomfortable in any way. Not at all. Thank you for doing this. That was Eliza Hittman. The movie Never Rarely, Sometimes, Always is now available. It's her newest. Now available to rent on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and most video on demand platforms.

I would go watch all her other ones, including the short, despite what she thinks of it. And now I'm going to play my, my new old guitar for you. I'm getting the hang of it. We're building a bond. Me and the 1960 Les Paul Jr.

I'm starting to feel what it's all about. We're understanding each other here. Listen. what it's all about. We're understanding each other. Here, listen. Thank you. Boomer lives. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of kids night when the Toronto rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will

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