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Sorry, Thanks is the directorial debut of Dia Sokol, the producer of films by Andrew Bujalski, Alex Karpovsky and Joe Swanberg; it stars Bujalski and a cast of largely non-actors; it was shot by Matthias Grunsky, the cinematographer of both Mutual Appreciation and Nights and Weekends. The sum total of these names and titles point in a certain trajectory of recent American film, one which need not be named by name to anyone who recognizes these references.

But Sorry, Thanks equally reminds of the indie films of the 90s, the kind of low budget but fully realized ensemble films that, if you didn’t see at Sundance, you’ve seen hundreds of times on the Sundance channel, the kind that slowly and cumulatively but surely turned character actors like Sam Rockwell and Catherine Keener into something like stars. Sorry, Thanks, a uniquely moral film but also a very funny one, offers the same kind of platform for the talents of Bujalski (here playing a real character, one even further afield from the on-screen persona developed across his own first two features than the dickish office manager in last year’s Goliath), and, even more so, Wiley Wiggins. Wiggins, in his first leading role in eight years, gives a minor miracle of a comic performance as Max, a 30-ish ****-up who’s so deep within his own dysfunction that he can hardly see it.

When Max hooks up with Kira (Kenya Miles), all Sokol shows us is a pre-or-post coital-cute shadow puppet play (”Tonight’s special,” Max says) and the awkward morning after, when Max can barely open his eyes to register Kira’s eagerness to begin her walk of shame. The narrative splits so we can follow these clandestine bed partners separately for awhile. Max, so hapless that it seems he can barely dress himself (in fact, he defaults to the same shirt several times throughout the feature), relies on his grumpy, no-bullshit friend Mason (Bujalski) for rides around San Francisco, and to his job training interns at the office of a politician. When a new batch of bright, bright-eyed kids comes in, Max asks them right off the bat (in a deadpan that’s so weirdly cold that it makes you instantly worry about his mental state) to admit that they’re people of “compromised ideals,” and to be prepared to “watch [their] inner idealist die.”  Meanwhile, Kira’s recently out of a seven year relationship. She’s going through the familiar process of figuring out how to put together a quasi-grown-up life for the first time on her own. This involves going out a lot, drinking a lot, testing out friends as lovers, wandering around the city alone — anything to avoid having to go back to her new, barren apartment by her lonesome. Both of them seem to be trying to drift through the city and their lives without touching anything or letting anything touch.

Max and Kira come back together when, via friends of friends, they end up in the same bar. Max’s girlfriend Sara — whose very existence catches Kira by surprise — is there, too.  From the moment Sara, played by Ia Hernandez, steps on screen, we feel really, really bad for caring or even knowing about Max and Kira’s one night stand and ongoing flirtation. She’s adorable, she’s the kind of genuinely good person (she works with “heroin addicted schizophrenics and critiques films based on their “moral center”) who unknowingly makes the less upstanding among us hate themselves, their relationship seems to be such that she probably didn’t do anything to inspire infidelity, and she evidently trusts Max so much that she’d never suspect it.  It’s clear that her boyfriend is the fuckup, and that she’s only at fault for not realizing nearly how badly off he actually is. The introduction of the Sara character transforms Sorry, Thanks from another casual inquiry into the dating lives of urban twenty-somethings into a film about consequence, one which forces the viewer to question their own sympathies for the self-destructive actions (and inactions) of the primary pair on screen.

The blending of actors and non-actors gives Sorry, Thanks an interesting texture. Kenya Miles has been given a gift in the character of Kira, the rare female protagonist who is as blatantly indecisive and impassive as the average on screen young man, who says no and means it, who has needs and fulfills them without being needy. She occasionally has trouble holding down the screen on her own or in concert with some of the film’s more spectral presences, but she obviously gets what’s going on with Kira and is more often than not able to find a chemistry with her scene partners that makes the film, though tightly scripted by Sokol and Lauren Veloski, feel natural, casual, colloquial. Miles’ chemistry with Wiggins is of particular interest; it’s a slightly uneasy and at times, almost creepy one, which befits Max and Kira’s illogical and doomed ongoing flirtation. As the character develops and becomes more comfortable as a lone ranger, the actress’ performance becomes more impressive.

It’s rare to see a contemporary low-budget ensemble comedy that values each of its supporting players as much as Sorry, Thanks does, to the extent where each character, even those on screen for barely a scene, feels so real and whole and fully worked-out that you imagine they could fill their own movie. But this is ultimately Wiley Wiggins’ show. With a tiny facial tic here, a slight vocal inflection there, Wiggins finds jokes within jokes, adds poignancy to Max’s worst behavior, and somehow gets away with it.There’s a scene where someone’s trying to teach him how to use a copy machine that’s amazing. The mix of humility, sadness, frustration and agony dancing across his face is a little heartbreaking, and a little hilarious. It’s that tone that sets Sorry, Thanks apart — it sets you up with its deceptively breezy, primary colored staging, and, in the unlikeliest of times and modes, delivers a gut punch.

As a wedding present, Kris and Joe Swanberg received, among other gifts, an ice-cream maker. Almost immediately, Kris found herself experimenting with recipes—whiskey with bread pudding, hot chocolate with roasted marshmallows, coffee and doughnut and gingersnap cookie, four flavors a season. She sells them now by the pint at a local grocery store. During the day Kris heads to work as a substitute teacher, and though she loves teaching and is pursuing her graduate work in higher education, it’s a transitional occupation that she says is rather worthless and unfulfilling.

Joe, meanwhile, constantly developing ideas for a seemingly endless list of to-make films, struggles with all those mundanities that thwart his creative productivity. “Doing my laundry or washing my dishes, all of these tasks are cutting into time that I could use to be making work,” he says. “If I could employ a labor force to dress me in the morning, do all these tasks, drive me places, and if I could have people simultaneously scouting locations for several different projects and setting up the paperwork with SAG, then I’d have the energy within me to make six or seven features a year, I’m sure. Now, I’m just physically incapable of it.” The statement, made during an initial interview, is all the more humorously appropriate considering that Kris answers the phone for the second of the two lengthy conversations saying, “Oh, I’ll get Joe; he’s just folding socks.”

In many ways, as most couples do, Kris and Joe see and think in very different manners. While Kris tends not to debate film, or even at times actively note it, Joe delves into every nook and cranny of a cinematic trend or debate. While she’s articulate although softer spoken, he’s passionately, loudly declarative. While she finds comfort in realism, he finds himself moving into a greater period of experimentation. Yet for all of these differences, and perhaps because of them, the Swanbergs have weathered ten years together of both romantic ramblings and professional collaborations. This is only just the briefest of glimpses at the Swanbergs as a couple.

With their tender, quite unintentionally well-fit companion pieces It was great, but I was ready to come home and Alexander the Last, Kris and Joe, at least on some level deep down, speak to one another through their art. Theirs are messages of loving but wavering, of mourning in a quiet way, of almost losing and wanting to regain, of friendship and fidelity and in both films –– in one quite literally and the other metaphorically –– of coming home. While very different in their outlooks, like Kris and Joe themselves, the films are beautifully made, their stories told with a maturity that speaks to a generation now growing up.

With her debut feature It was great, but I was ready to come home, Kris stars as Annie, who along with best friend Cam (Jade Healy), travels around Costa Rica nursing a broken heart. Although the break-up scenario is never fully explained, Annie hopes for some commitment that her ex-boyfriend is simply not willing to give. As the increasingly introspective journey continues, eloquent long shots of greenery passing in a slight blur punctuating this, Annie and Cam find less and less to say to one another, as if the trip were one very long phone conversation at the end of which there’s an inevitable and interminable pause.

More outgoing and aggressive, Alexander the Last studies the repercussions of emotional wandering spurred on by sexual attraction. When musician husband Elliot (Justin Rice) heads out on tour, stage actress wife Alex (Jess Weixler) finds herself progressively attracted to her leading man Jaime (Barlow Jacobs). As the attraction tangles itself in complications, and Alex’s sometimes too close for comfort sister Helen (Amy Seimetz) becomes involved in the mix, Alex is forced to confront her feelings and ultimately reconcile her dedication and promise with her desire and impulse.

Both films offer ample space for reflection, and if early buzz about the two films is any indication, much of that reflection will center on how Kris and Joe as people meet Kris and Joe as filmmakers, how the situations from a life become the situations presented in a film. All these questions, asked by both the strongest of supporters and harshest of critics, will make up the journey that though the Swanbergs take with separate films, they take, as they have for so many years before, together.

A common theme with both films is this notion of commitment. Through the processes of making these two films, what did you both learn about the idea of commitment, and how has that idea evolved in your minds?

Joe: Alexander… is more of a meditation on commitment based on a lot of thoughts that I had between making Nights and Weekends and starting this. All of the movies, because they are improvised, are in figuring out what they are about as we go. I learn a lot while making all of them, but probably I didn’t learn much about commitment while making this one because [I’d already thought of it] as a theme. So the learning experience came in other ways—working with actors for the first time, working from an outline.

Kris: I don’t want to say [commitment is] not a theme of my movie, but for me, I never felt that it was.

Joe: How about lack of commitment?

Kris: Well…I don’t really see that as what the film is about.

Joe: Oh, I do.

Kris: That’s what I’m saying. I don’t want to say that it’s not about lack of commitment, but to me it’s not really about that.

Joe: What’s it about?

Kris: (laughs) I didn’t know you were going to interview me.

To me, the movie is about a lot of things. It’s about self-discovery; it’s about that really intense friendship that women can have; it’s about attempting to do something and not really being able to do it. It’s about a ton of things for me, and I guess commitment falls in there, but to me that theme is not bigger than anything else.

Because these themes for you, Kris, seem to come from so many different places, would you say that they were subterranean in your consciousness as you were developing the project?

Kris: The themes that are tackled in this movie to me are very real life. Just like on a trip that you would take that would be like this trip, there would be so many things going on underneath the surface. I think it’s natural that in the way the film played out, [those themes] came naturally as well. So we were discovering these themes as we were going, although a lot of them I had in my head before we went.

Joe: For me this is the first film I’ve made where I wouldn’t have accepted that the couple would break up at the end. I’m usually open and loose enough to have whatever happens naturally between the actors determine the direction that the movie takes, but I would say that here there was no subterranean aspect in that sense, that the film was so much about commitment that I was determined to have it end a certain way, that the couple would stay together.

For sake of logic, I’ll break the next portion of my questions down first one film and then the other. So, Kris, we’ll start with It was great,…

Recently, I happened to speak with David Lowery about the editing process for this film, and he mentioned that basically what you and he did in the four-day edit was to cut out any moment that felt inorganic or situational. That note seemed to go into the comment you’d made two years ago that you were only interested in seeing narrative films that were like documentaries. Having seen Bathwater as well as Boys and Girls, I wasn’t surprised to see that you achieved this here, but I was so excited to see that you had. I was hoping you’d speak about that process of actually being able to make that narrative film that felt like a documentary.

Kris: That’s so funny. I don’t even remember saying that…(laughs) I totally feel that way still. Part of the reason why I think I was so interested in making a narrative film is that it allows you to get access, if you’re making a film in the style that I felt I did, to a realism that you wouldn’t be granted access to in a documentary.

While we were in Costa Rica, [David and I] were worried about plot, and it was like, “Oh, my God, what is this movie? What is this movie? What’s going to happen? Something needs to happen.” Once in a while when we were there, we’d come up with these little scenarios and shot these little scenes, and when we came back, we realized that we cut almost all of those out. Anything that we’d shot to aid a plot along, or use for exposition, we ended up cutting from the film.

Can you tell me a bit about how it was that you, David, Jade and [cinematographer Benjamin Kasulke] all worked together in order to build the story?

Kris: This is a movie I’ve been thinking about for over a year…Once Jade and I decided to make it, David and Ben got involved as well, and we didn’t really talk too much about the film as a group before we went to Costa Rica. I remember Ben writing me an e-mail and saying something like, “What are we making? Are we still doing this?”

When we got there, David, Jade and I took some Spanish classes before Ben arrived. After that we were talking all the time, shooting and figuring out what we wanted to do…We were in Costa Rica for three weeks making this, and I don’t think the story came together for us until week two. Once we had that together, we’d just sit around in our hotels, sit on the bed, have a notebook and just talk about what we thought—what we thought would be cool, what we thought would be right for the story, what we thought the girls would be doing, what we wanted to say with the story and then what we had to do to achieve that. We’d just all have these meetings, and since we worked together all the time, these meetings extended forever, from morning until night.

It seems as if, the story coming together in week two, the ideas having come up in such an organic way, they were meant to happen: you were meant to shot these scenes; Ben, David and Jade were meant to be with you. Do you feel like there’s that element at all with this film?

We went to Costa Rica not even really knowing what cities we were going to go to, the little towns we were going to explore. I had been to Costa Rica three years earlier so I’d done some traveling and had ideas of these different places, which is one of the reasons that I felt really confident shooting there. There was one town I went to three years ago that I just loved called Coweta; it’s this really small town, just really cute, and I really wanted to go back. At the time that we were there to shoot, there was a huge flooding on the coast, and so we couldn’t go to that town. So we went to another town and just happened to meet [supporting cast members Nick Drashner and Caitlin Donohue] who happened to be staying in the hostel there… Had we not met them or anyone else, [those scenes] may not have been part of the film. That was definitely serendipitous.

This makes a very subtle note in the film, one that most people won’t necessarily pick up on, that Annie comes from a Hispanic background, and that’s quietly pointed out when Cam defers to her about pronunciation. And so, in a way, Annie should be culturally at home in this foreign country, and yet she feels distinctly not at home because [her ex-boyfriend] Matt is not with her.

As more of a cultural marker and as a side note, do you feel that being in Costa Rica for that three weeks drew you any closer to your notion of identity as a Cuban?

Kris: My identity and my heritage I’ve struggled with for a long time just because it’s very much my blood and not very much my culture, and so I’m aware of it when I’m in Costa Rica where people have both. It’s always frustrating for me. It’s something that I very much want to be a part of but know that I never will. No matter how much Spanish I learn, no matter how fluent I’ll be, I’ll never be as Cuban as someone who was raised in the culture.

I did my entire senior thesis, a documentary, about my mom and why she didn’t teach me Spanish. It was a really big deal to me then, and I felt very resentful of her for not including me in that culture that I felt was my birthright. I was very upset when I made that film about all that. It wasn’t an angry film by any means, but it was a chance for me to explore that and ask my mom some questions that I’d never been able to ask before. That’s six years ago. Now it’s not that big of an issue for me, though I always do get frustrated that I’m not able to speak the same language and be part of that culture.

Language is so immediate, yet even in speaking English, assuming that should be a common bond between myself and others, I realize that within that there are many different languages [of thought]. This is another idea, this idea of the interpretations of language, that It was great… deals with. I love that moment between Annie and Cam where Annie says, “I just really wish you understood me right now.” It’s obvious that they are speaking the same language, but at the same time they are not speaking the same language at all.

[In that moment] I don’t think that either one of them is listening to the other one, and it’s really the only serious discussion that they have; it’s pretty short, and there’s not really all that much said. But, actually when we shot that, I think we shot for about 45 minutes, and then afterwards Jade and I had a two hour discussion about marriage. Well, we argued about it, and David and Ben went into the other room and put headphones on. (laughs) They definitely did not want anything to do with that.

…There is also a minor power struggle between Cam and Annie, just in the sense that Cam is always the one driving, until, that is, she gets sick. Was that a purposefully laid out power struggle between these two women?

Kris: It definitely was. It’s something that we talked about a lot. We wanted there to be a change when Cam got sick because I just think, and this is relatable for everybody and certainly not just for women, that depending on who you’re with, what group you’re with and what relationships you have, you play a certain role in that relationship. In Cam and Annie’s relationship, Cam is the leader. Cam is the one who has the ideas of where to go. Cam is driving, and Annie is not. I think that’s true in a lot of relationships, and that can be very frustrating with friendships. I find this with Joe all the time. When I’m with Joe, he’s usually the one who is leading. We’re in a different city, he’s the one who’s reading the subway map and figuring out where to go. When I’m not with Joe, then usually I’m the one who’s doing that. And so, there is usually some sort of power struggle in a relationship, and people have to find their roles and where they can fit in.

Another moment that I really enjoyed between the two women and that I thought was so poignant was the one in which Cam is doing handstands with [the fellow travelers that the women meet], and Annie’s feeling is, “Oh, this is too much work.” Annie seems to me a very functional character, yet at the same time, she has moments like this and the later moment when she goes into town to find a pharmacy and can’t find one, and suddenly she’s presented as a functional character who put in this new location is distinctly not functional.

Kris: She’s a very realistic character, and I didn’t want to make her totally inept. She’s social, and she’s friendly, funny and cool. But, also, clearly she has insecurities; she has problems with the break-up that she just went through, trying to figure out what she wants and what she’s doing.

That handstand scene I think is very funny and very true, and it also has something to do with the fact that her best friend who she is traveling with now has another friend and is successfully doing something cool with someone else that she can’t do and that she doesn’t even really want to attempt to do. So she pouts about it. I’ve certainly found myself in those situations. It’s mainly something you see with young kids, but it does transfer over into adulthood. It’s the jealousy of your friend hanging out with someone else and trying to figure out how you can fit into that situation.

When the critics get a hold on the film at South by Southwest, I feel there will be an inevitable comparison of this film with [Kelly Reichardt’s] Old Joy. I’ll be very interested to see if this comparison is used in a positive context or in a negative one. It’ll either be, “Why do these women keep making these beautiful, sad and quiet films about interpersonal relationships?” or “Yeah! We have another somewhat sad and personal female filmmaker.”

As a female viewing this film, my experience was one of a huge amount of gratitude because I felt so at home in the narrative. So here’s the question: I’m wondering why it is that when we see women who make independent films—and I’m thinking of Lynne Ramsay, Lucrecia Martel, Claire Denis, and this is the same feeling I have with Lynn Shelton’s work and your work here—we see these ideas that life is very beautiful and also very sad. There has to be a connection of those two perspectives with the experience of womanhood, but I don’t know what that is. Do you have any more notion than I do?

Kris: I told David I was bringing him along so that he made sure that I didn’t make a bad film. He said that he would, so he gave me a list of all of these movies to watch, of which I watched none. (laughs) Old Joy was one of them, and I haven’t re-watched it since I saw it the first time. Of course there are similarities, but I didn’t even think about that.

But, I think you’re right. Everything that I’ve seen that has been like that has been so much about what’s going on in the inside with the characters, and that’s really what I think is interesting. I really love films that are quiet and that are slow and that are sad—not necessarily sad, I guess, but usually when films are quiet, they are introspective. I don’t know why that appeals to me, why that appeals to you, or why that seems similar in different women’s work, but I’m with you.

If anyone can understand that conundrum, that will also, for me, un-obfuscate what it is women are saying with their filmmaking. I hope someone figures that out one day.

I’d like to talk about one other specific moment of this film, and that’s the tender moment between Annie and Cam in the bed. That, for me, is the pivotal moment in which Annie has this breakdown, and you learn how important Matt is to her. It’s an interesting moment in that throughout the film the cinematography always reminds the audience that this is definitively Annie’s story, yet in that overhead shot the focus is on both women. In that shot, the film is both of their stories. I was hoping you could talk about that perspective and then specifically how you pulled off the emotion of the scene.

Kris: I firmly did not think that I could have done that. If you would have asked me if I could cry in a movie, I would have said, “No.” I certainly don’t consider myself an actress in any way. That scene was just supposed to be one where it’s quiet at night and Annie and Cam talk about Matt. I didn’t want it to be lame. I didn’t want it to be annoying. I didn’t want it to be Annie complaining or whining about her situation. What ended up happening is that when we were shooting, I just started crying. I didn’t mean to. We didn’t plan on it. It just happened. I can remember that moment, and I just really became overwhelmed with emotion. I became really sad, me, Kris became empathetic for Annie.

The idea of someone going to Costa Rica to get over her boyfriend, when you hear about someone breaking up with her boyfriend and doing that, it’s almost juvenile. In a way you always feel like, “Oh, she’ll get over it.” It’s not something lost forever, it’s not like somebody died, but it is. It is a really big deal; it’s really emotional; it’s really terrible. I wanted to convey that in a way that was empathetic, realistic and wasn’t cheesy in a way that would make Annie seem like a teenager. Why that moment is so great for me is that it’s not really about Matt, her relationship with Matt and how sad she is that Matt. It’s about her and Cam. It’s about that intimacy of lying in bed with another woman and crying about someone and having her hold you. That is so unique to female relationships. It isn’t sexual; it’s just loving and maternal. In that moment in the film, you really realize how close these two people are.

Then, of course, naturally that closeness is almost too much at a certain point in time, and there’s a necessary retraction afterward.

Kris: I totally agree. Female relationships are really complicated, not always, but when you have a really close friend, a best friend, and especially in a situation like Cam and Annie are in where the friends are traveling together and sharing beds, it’s like a romantic relationship. But, it’s not, so there is that chosen distance, and when something intimate like that happens, there is a pull away effect.

Going into South by Southwest do you have any hopes or fears about how people are going to receive the film? Do you worry about the critics at all? I know you’re happy with the film’s journey and will continue to make films so long as these journeys are pleasant, but do you think that the reception of the end product has any bearing on your thoughts right now?

Kris: If for some reason I get to South by Southwest, and I get flooded with terrible, mean reviews and people walk out of the theater (laughs) because they just hate it, I’ll probably be really nervous next time I make a movie. I don’t think that’s going to happen. I do have some fears—well, they’re not even fears, I just expect it—that people are going to say that the only reason I got into the film festival is on account of Joe, that my work doesn’t stand up to that caliber, that it’s incestuous. People are always ready to say that, and that’s something I expected a long time ago, before we even went to start to shoot. It’s natural that people would think about that. I’m ready for that. I’m not too scared…I do expect some negative reactions, but I also hope I get positive ones. I do expect people to come up after the movie, and say, “That really meant something to me because I’ve had that experience before.” That always wins out.

Alright, I’ll jump over now to speak with Joe.

So one element that I was very excited to see revisited with this film was the focus on the experimentalism. I love LOL, and part of what I love from that film is the experimentalism and the fact that you are able to get away with this experimentalism so gracefully, fluidly and unexpectedly.

Joe: Well, that’s depending on who you’re talking to.

That goes into another point that we’ll speak about later.

Joe laughs.

But for now, I’d like to talk about where those experimental sequences came from and how, in the improvisation process, you decide, “Hey, let’s just pie ourselves in the face.”

Joe: It’s nice to hear that you like that because I do too. One of my biggest problems with independent film in general is that there is hardly any experimentalism, and most movies just feel like typical Hollywood movies, which is just crazy to me because we have the freedom to do whatever we want.

The ideas just come from everywhere, and usually the ones that sound the craziest and the most unnecessary are the ones that I end up getting excited about and insist that we put into the movie. I forget when it was, but at some point I was talking to Barlow, even before we were making Alexander…, and we started talking about people getting hit in the face with pies, how it’s not really something that we see much anymore. Right then and there I was like, “Sometime we’re going to make a movie together, and it’s going to open with you getting hit in the face with a pie.” When Alexander… became that movie, I didn’t matter that it was a drama, that it was a movie about marriage and commitment and relationships, Barlow and I had decided that we were going to make a movie where he got hit in the face with a pie, and this was the one. That happened all along the way with this movie, with LOL and with other movies. It’s kind of like they become these collections of ideas and moments that seem interesting and good. I’m not really spiritual or faithful in any other way than with my work, where I have this deep faith that if we take all of these weird elements that don’t necessarily seem like they’ll fit together, but we do the best we can and we do them sincerely, then somehow the culmination of these weird elements will be more interesting than any of them individually.

That’s how we get to that place, but then within the context of the movie, it’s one thing to say, “We’re going to start the movie with you getting hit in the face with a pie,” and it’s another thing to actually be there shooting that and thinking about how it works. Then for me it suddenly makes perfect sense because we make the pie, hit Barlow in the face with it, and I’m holding the camera and looking through it at this image, and then I’m suddenly like, “Oh, right, this is a movie about an actress and acting.” That’s when I told the actors, “Now that you have this pie in your face and look stupid, I want you to act beautiful and pretend that you are putting make-up on and looking in the mirror.” For me, that becomes what acting in one sense is all about, which is trying to look cool or pretty with pie in your face. (laughs) It’s a very embarrassing profession a lot of the time, and in some ways it’s sort of a stupid and weird thing to do with your time, even though all of us do it for one reason or another.

I wasn’t even thinking about the actors consciously trying to look pretty because they all looked so amazingly uncomfortable.

Joe: (laughs) I know.

On that note, I think this film is really well cast. There are moments from each actor that stay with me…How did you work with the actors here? I know, as you mentioned before, that it was at least a bit different, but was it significantly different than your approach in the past for films and Web series?

Joe: It was different in that the actors had different questions for me than a non-actor would have, so that was an interesting, immediate thing to deal with, figuring out how to answer those questions while also not answering the ones I didn’t want to answer. Part of the process is always in keeping everybody a little bit in the dark, including myself, as to what exactly is going on at any given moment. So, if [I was] working with somebody who likes to prepare, likes to know their character and who has these very specific questions, I didn’t want to make them feel uncomfortable, let them down or not give them what they were looking for from me, but I also oftentimes had to find quiet ways to say, “I don’t want to give you the answer to that. I want you not to know, and if that scares you, there’s a reason why I’m doing that.” Beyond that, everybody was great, totally willing to throw themselves into it without a script, and we’d often have to make decisions based on my whims, ideas and crazy notions. Everybody was a real trooper.

It’s nice that you say that the movie is well cast, but I can’t take credit for that necessarily because I based the movie around these people. If it feels well cast, it’s because those characters are specifically this way because the actors were playing those roles, not the other way around. I didn’t have an idea of this story and then go through a casting process of looking for the right people for the parts. It was more like, “These are the people that I want to work with. What story can I make with them?”

In that case the question is, and I believe this still does reflect back upon you: What is it about the energies of certain people that you’re interested in?

Joe: I wish I knew, other than I just know when I know. It’s different for everybody. Part of it has to be that I get a feeling from somebody that they want to be looked at and paid attention to, and that’s something that I can read best in people outside of a traditional casting process. I can get a better sense of that at a party than by sitting down with somebody to met for coffee, which is why a lot of my films end up being cast with friends and people that I meet randomly. There’s a certain exhibitionism that is probably present in everybody that I’ve worked with; whether they necessarily display that all the time or not, I, at the very least before I cast them, caught some flash or glimpse of it. They have to be smart; they have to have a lot of interest outside of just movies because a lot of the ideas for the movies come from conversations about totally other things. And, on a very basic level, they probably all flatter me to some extent; they’re fun, nice people to be around, and I feel comfortable and good in their company. Making a movie is kind of an embarrassing, weird thing to do, so I think you have to feel safe and secure around the people that you are doing it with.

I know many other directors and actors will throw themselves very consciously into the most uncomfortable positions that they can get, and somehow they feel that that’s where they can draw their best work from. So, it’s interesting to note that for you the work has to come from a place of almost hyper-comfort.

Joe: Nights and Weekends is the only project where that wasn’t true for me, where I was working in a very obviously uncomfortable situation. I’m really proud of that movie and excited about it, but it wasn’t a working process that I was interested in trying to repeat. But, other than that, if I’m going to spend all of my time, energy and money on these movies, I want them to be good experiences personally.

I do want to speak about the sound design for a minute…The scene in which is was first really apparent to me that you were doing something new with the sound design is in the one in which the sisters are juxtaposed, in two different ways, in two different locations, tussling over Jaime. How did that overlapping sound design approach come about, and how did you and Kevin Bewersdorf work together in order to get what you wanted for this film?

Joe: Just like with the movies themselves, the reason why I don’t write scripts, and usually why I try to go into the movies with as few ideas as possible, is that things will happen accidentally that will be interesting. I just have no faith that I have the kind of brain that could invent in a vacuum, to where I could sit at a desk and say, “I would like to, in my next film, write a scene where two things are happening simultaneously and through that you hear overlapping dialogue.” It’s just not how I think and throughout the history of cinema and other arts, I don’t think that’s how new things come about. I think that almost always they are accidents, technical glitches or something that you’re forced to work with.

[The overlapping dialogue here probably came from] the way that Final Cut Pro works where you drag a clip into the timeline, then the audio is attached to that clip and then you bring another image over the top of it and that audio is attached to that second clip. I was just editing without adjusting the audio levels, placed these two scenes over the top of each other and started listening to them both at the same time. That simultaneously happened with David Lowery while we were shooting the other scene when [Justin Rice and Jo Schornikow] were playing the music in one room and Jess and Barlow were rehearsing in the other room. We had the mics set up for the room that we were in, and then David took one of the wireless mics and just put it in the kitchen. The camera we were using could simultaneously record two channels, and as soon as he was setting it up, we looked at each other, and we were like, “Ah! Yes, this is a very good idea.” Barlow and Jess didn’t know and weren’t paying attention to the mic in the room and were just having a completely other conversation while I was shooting Justin and Jo playing the song together. But, I had the headphones on, so I was listening to these two pieces of audio at the same time. So neither party was necessarily aware of what was going on, but in my head I was focusing on the visuals of one scene, and simultaneously had in my left ear one channel of audio and in my right another channel of audio. I just knew that as a concept it was working, and so, even though we didn’t end up using the actually audio that we recorded that day, when I cut that scene, I instantly went back to that concept and blended those two tracks. That’s exciting for me. There’s room to play around there.

Then when I brought the whole film to Kevin, all the overlapping elements were in place, and so what Kevin did was to create a whole additional soundscape around the film and introduce a lot of ideas that just never in a million years would have occurred to me. We just sat down, watched my cut of the movie, and then as soon as it was over, he had all these great ideas about what to do. So it’s definitely the most complex sound that I’ve had in any of the projects.

So I have a few big, last questions for both of you. We talked about this idea of learning before, and so Joe over the course of your filmography, and Kris, with this your first feature, what is one thing new that you feel you learned from working on each of these projects?

Kris: I definitely learned how to direct a film. (laughs) One of my biggest struggles was learning how to articulate what I wanted in my head, and I had a really difficult time figuring out how to direct while I was acting. I think I’m in almost every frame of the film. Sometimes we’d shoot, and then I’d look at what Ben had shot, and I was like, “Why did you shoot it that way?” And, he’d say, “Well, you didn’t tell me which way to shoot it.” I had to learn how to plan a shot out and then how to articulate that to someone else.

Joe: On a technical level, I keep getting more comfortable with this camera that I’ve been using so that with each project I’m able to push in a new direction and be more specific about the look. Then each project allows me to learn a lot about the people that I’m working with. Jess, Barlow and Amy were not strangers but brand new friends when we started this project, and after several months of working together, several months of living in the same apartment, it was awesome, definitely learning a lot about them. (laughs) I’m sure they learned a lot about me.

But, [Alexander…] pushed me in a different direction. I’m not nearly as interested in realism as I used to be. It’s funny that you asked Kris about only being interested in films that feel like documentaries because I think I probably would have said the same thing a few years ago, and I don’t feel that way at all anymore. I worked in a natural progression pushing more and more toward realism, I think Nights and Weekends being the most like a documentary—no additional music, only natural audio. Now, Alexander… is pushing me back in the other direction, and the film I’m making now is even more extreme. Eventually I think my films won’t be at all realistic.

Both of the ends of these films seem to convey two meanings, one reading very hopeful, the second reading much more bittersweet, and so I was hoping that you both could address your feelings about the endings of these films.

Kris: The ending of my film, I think, is pretty sad, but I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s that sad. Here’s this girl who went on this trip hoping to get something out of it, to get over somebody or to gain something, and she comes back in the same position that she was when she left.

Joe: There’s something weird for me with all of the movies. As much as they’ve been improvised and completely re-formed to some extent, for some reason I’ve always been able to visualize the opening shot and the closing shot of almost all of the projects. Oftentimes those are the only two things I had when I started the project—I know how it’s going to start, and I know how it’s going to end, or at least somewhere along the way, the ending comes very clearly to me. That definitely happened on Alexander…, where, at some point, I just had this image in my head.

We’ve obviously been seeing this play throughout the film, and in the final shot, we get to see its performance. On a much deeper, more symbolic level, the shot has several meanings, inside the context of the movie and outside of that personally for me.

Here then is one personal question: It seemed to me as if Alexander the Last, being dedicated to Kris, is equal parts a love song and an apology. Is that accurate?

Joe: Absolutely, it’s definitely both. Nights and Weekends was a very difficult movie for me to make and for our relationship, so it felt great to be able to make a movie that was a much happier experience and also to be able to obviously apologize in person within our relationship but in a more public way, in a more artistic way, to make a love letter to her.