thefilmpanelnotetaker Blog

Kris Swanberg's directorial debut, It was great, but I was ready to come home debuted at the 2009 SXSW Film Festival to glowing reviews. This marked Kris' first major foray into narrative, after previously working in the documentary milieu in projects such as the short, Bathwater, and her Nerve.com web series, Boys and Girls. It was great, but I was ready to come home will next play on Saturday, April 18th at the Atlanta Film Festival.

Erin was inspired to interview Kris upon seeing such phrases as "it was great but i was ready to come home" and "ready to come home swanberg" turn up on the Google Analytics page for her blog. The interview was conducted via e-mail.

Erin: How did you become interested in film? How old were you, and what were your earliest endeavors?

Kris: I first got interested in being a filmmaker at the end of my teenage years. I went to a high school in Germantown, Tennessee, right outside of Memphis that had a great television program. Unfortunately, it was pretty discriminating against female students and I wasn’t really allowed to work the cameras or do anything technical that the boys were encouraged to do. That, of course, infuriated me and I went off to college determined to learn those very things. I had always been interested in different cultures and had decided to become a documentary filmmaker. I spent most of my time in film school doing just that.

Erin: You met Joe while you were a freshman at Carbondale. Did you two collaborate on anything while you were still in school?

Kris: Yeah, Joe and I helped each other on a lot of projects in film school, but I don't think we really collaborated on anything specific. We mostly just helped the other one with whatever they were up to.

Erin: I once read an interview with Joe, and he said that Kissing on the Mouth was based on an idea you had in college. What was the original idea, and did it differ from the final result?

Kris: Kissing On The Mouth was in part inspired by a Super 8 project I did for my intro film class in college. It was called "ex" and was an audio documentary project about people's most recent breakups. It was sort of experimental and had some visual narrative elements running parallel to the interviews. It was something that Joe really liked and when we talked about what project we wanted to make out of school that came to mind. Kissing On The Mouth, of course, became a very different project than "ex" which was only about 5 minutes long. It definitely had some similar elements though like all the audio documentary interviews that ended up in the final film.

Erin: Do you think that working with Joe gave you a lot of confidence to make It was great, but I was ready to come home?

Kris: Absolutely. Joe has always had the confidence to make anything he has had the inspiration for. I've always admired that and watching him follow through with all of his projects has definitely inspired me to make mine.

Erin: Following your graduation from college, you worked as a school teacher, and you are in the process of finishing a master's degree in education. However, you told me at the Indie Go Go party at SXSW that you had been laid off from your job. Are you looking for another teaching job right now?

Kris: I taught high school in a low-income neighborhood in Chicago for two years, but last year the school closed down and all of the faculty and staff was laid off. Even though I was sad to say goodbye to all my students and to a job that I thought I was really getting good at - I definitely felt like it came at a good time. Not only have I had more time to work on my film, but I've also started my own business making ice cream and I'm glad to have more mental energy to work on those things. But I'm not entirely finished with being a teacher. Education is still a great passion of mine.

Erin: While you were teaching, what did you teach specifically? (Did you teach elementary school? Junior High? High School? Any specific subject?)

Kris: I taught film and video to 10th-12th graders.

Erin: In your short documentary "Bathwater," you profile the bathtime rituals of mothers and their children, with the mothers addressing their children in several languages. What was your intent in making the movie? How did you find the families?

Kris: At the time (and today!) I had a great interest in language and in the transference of language from parent to child. I was also interested in the ritual of bathing a child. Its something that we share across cultures and even species. I thought of combining all of those things into a short documentary using verite footage. I found the subjects on craigslist. I just advertised that I was looking for bilingual mothers and I got a lot of responses.

Erin: With the exception of It was great, but I was ready to come home, most of your own film work (exclusive from Joe's) has been documentaries. Do you think you will return to the form, and perhaps even make a feature length documentary?

Kris: Right now I think I'm more interested in making narratives, but I could definitely see myself making more docs in the future.

Erin: It was great, but I was ready to come home debuted at SXSW last month, but you shot the movie in December. How did you manage to turnaround so quickly and get it into competition?

Kris: Well we shot the film over three weeks in Costa Rica with David editing a lot of it while we were in production. In early January I flew David to Chicago so we could finish editing here and he was able to get a pretty good cut outside of a week. Then we overnighted it to Janet [Pierson] at SXSW. As for getting it into competition - that wasn't something we asked for or even expected. We were very surprised and grateful.

Erin: How did you script the movie? Did you have an outline, or did you do what Joe and Greta did with the latter half of Nights and Weekends, and get together with Ben Kasulke over breakfast and discuss what you wanted to shoot that day?

Kris: We didn't have a script or an outline. I had phone conversations with everyone involved before we left but we didn't start to have real plans until we were already in Costa Rica together. Our entire trip was sort of a constant production meeting and we were always checking in with each other and looking at footage an reassessing what we were doing. It was almost as though we were writing the script as we were going along.

Erin: I take it that It was great... came from the desire to explore an idea--in your case, female friendships--and the story grew out of that. Am I right?

Kris: Yes. I have been wanting to make a film that explores female friendship for a while. The other themes explored in the film came about after that initial intent.

Posing for the camera with Jade Healy (left) in
It was great, but I was ready to come home

Erin: At the premiere of the movie, David Lowery stated that the movie he saw on screen was different from the one you had gone to shoot. What were you originally intending on shooting, and how did that differ from the final product?

Kris: I'm very proud of the film we made and as far as I can remember that's exactly what I wanted to make!

Erin: How did you coordinate the shoot? Did you have a tightly planned schedule? Shooting the movie in Costa Rica, did you have a problem with customs? (Getting equipment, etc.)

Kris: Costa Rica was an amazing country to shoot in and we didn't have any problems at all. As far as our schedule it varied depending on where we were in the shoot. Most days we shot between 3-5 scenes but some of those were heavily planned and some weren't and then of course some days we shot more or less. It depended on where we were and what we had to get done.

Erin: I read in Paste and at The Spout Blog that you are now running an ice cream business. Can you tell us more about it? What are your current flavors, and where can one buy it?

Kris: Yes, I have an ice cream business in Chicago called Nice Cream. You can check it out at NiceCreamChicago.com. I sell my ice cream in pints to different grocery stores and cafes in the city. I change my flavors seasonally so right now for the Spring flavors I have Earl Grey Tea Ice Cream with Shortbread Cookies, Vanilla Bean Ice Cream with Lavender and Graham Crackers, Cream Cheese Ice Cream with Carrot Cake, and Chocolate Ice Cream with German Chocolate Frosting. They're delicious!

Under discussion:

Y Tu Mamá También  (2002)

Quinceañera  (2006)

Vanaja  (2007)

Matías: How do you get your first money to make your film?

Bertelsen: The first money is the hardest. I’m sure that’s not a newsflash. Typically it comes from well-established relationships including friends and family. Ultimately, the first money comes when you can demonstrate the reliability of your project. The trick is to get around the whole catch 22 when they say, what have you done before? If there was kind of a magic formula to that, I would have bottled it by now and sold it and paying for the rest of my career.

Kohli: I think before you get into the game, you need very little money to actually build alliances…people who get on board early, which can be organizations or grants…that align with your project.

Rubin: IndieGoGo is an online marketplace to connect filmmakers to fans. We’re giving the tools to filmmakers for fundraising. The filmmakers have already raised tens of thousands of dollars on IndieGoGo. Some of them have already had established films in their prior careers and their building their audiences online to turn that into money for their next films. Many of the filmmakers for the first time are raising between $500 to $10,000.

Bertelsen: Your first money can be a very strategic proposition. It doesn’t require everything up front. It’s about building partnerships, whether it be with established filmmakers, production companies, websites, etc. A lot of times, the early work of getting the first money is just a matter of forming relationships who can give you credibility as a filmmaker and give your story the legitimacy you know that it has.

Matías: Many filmmakers here are everything…we produce, direct, hand out the coffee, edit. How do you feel about that?

Levis: Start with a package that ultimately you want to get to an investor. These partnerships are intended to tell a sophisticated investor what you’re looking for and that the return for them is there. My belief is that you strengthen yourself by delegating to individuals that will strengthen your project. You may be an amazing director, but you find a producer who is better at producing. Just because you’re a great producer, doesn’t mean you’re a great distributor. Finding your alliances and building a team…the bigger the team is that you trust, the further you’ll go.

Matías: When should filmmakers think of getting an attorney as part of the team?

Ramírez: Let me first say that I tend to think of funding as falling into two broad categories:

1. Obtain secure funding from grants and foundations (ie. The Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation). That tends to be for the most part for social-themed documentaries. It takes a long time however. They usually want to see a body of work and someone with experience. It’s also an investment that’s going to pay off on their part.
2. Private equity…trying to get money from sophisticated investors. That tends to be a significantly more complicated process because you’re dealing with securities. You have to go through processes like registering with the SEC or blue sky agencies or coming up with documents that will have enough information for sophisticated investors to make an informed decision regarding their investment, because it is a really risky business.

Levis: The earlier you bring in council (and accounting), the better. Building that team is such an imperative aspect. At times, it may seem a little overwhelming, but there’s a lot of individuals out there that realize that risk. A great filmmaker or producer does not make a good lawyer or account, so asking as many questions as you can and getting free advice, so that way when you are approaching grants or private equity, you’ve got your numbers down. You have all those answers that are so important to them.

Rubin: One of the things that’s important to ask yourself is what are your goals for your movie? It can be just an artistic expression. It can be because you want to change your career and do this for a living…whether it’s a success or not. Be realistic. Christopher Nolan (director of The Dark Knight) is obviously now a rich man. His first movie cost $11,000.

Matías: When thinking about how to raise money, how do you divvy up the budget so you can understand who you’re going to approach?

Bertelsen: I think it starts much like Slava was saying by asking what your goals are. Ask yourself, who is the audience for this film? When you start to examine your project, you make decisions on who would be appropriate person to bring this to. For example, you’re not going to bring a low-budget indie horror film to a structurally themed documentary production company. It goes without saying, but you’d be surprised at how many first-time filmmakers don’t read the guidelines and don’t pay attention to what’s being asked of them when it comes to how to prerequisite their projects. You want to be very targeted. You’ve got to do your homework and know what it is they’re looking for. Tailor your projects to those interests the best that you can.

Kohli: I think it’s very important to do that homework he mentioned. Who are the players in the market and what they do? Exactly the way you have goals for your films, they have goals for their money. You need to be ready to understand who is most interested in your project. Be realistic. Who was the last you? Who did exactly what you’re trying to do? Learn from their mistakes.

Sergeant: Be creative and you have to be willing to really go that extra mile. I was going to do a narrative film depending on what it would cost. When you’re doing a narrative film, anybody who’s an investor or wherever you raise money, they want to know, ‘how can I get this back?’ A movie is one of the quickest ways to lose millions of dollars really fast.

Ramírez: All that information on how prepared you are should be a in a business plan. There’s a series of books out there, one that I’ve talked about on panels before is by Louise Levinson, Business Plans for Filmmakers. You’re going to have to do the research on what the market is and projections. What type of films like yours have made money? You also have to be honest for instance, these films like mine, have not made money, but most have. I was watching Quinceañera…I was so shocked in the interviews…I think they had an idea for a movie. They went to somebody. They had the money before they even had scripts. I had to rewind that. I don’t think that really happens

Levis: With the packaging and everything’s in place, there are so many key elements where things can go awry. It must be frustrating even after you’ve made a few films to locate the money. The global market is such a changing one. Last tear investors on Wall Street were really aggressive, but with the economy changing so much since last year, the opportunities are not there. Europe is looking to us now, because their money is so much stronger. Right now the pound is two-to-one. That means if you can start to talk to individuals there now that for instance say they’d like to shoot in New York City…what would cost 500,000 pounds here, I can easily get $1 million American. Things kind of equal the same. The day rate here, the day rate there. That’s true with a lot of European money. They’re really looking to the U.S. because everyone wants that U.S. affiliation. The opportunity to present yourself with a co-production company out of Spain or France or London…what you’re doing ultimately is giving them the opportunity to send their money and it goes further. Your business plan should also think about what happens outside the U.S.

Rubin: The Hollywood system has a term called pre-selling of foreign territories.

Matías: Historically, it has been difficult for us as Latinos and Latinas to be able to break into making these films and finding this money. Have things changed? Is it easier? Do we have topics that people want? Are our own communities willing to support what might not be mainstream, even by indie definitions?

Bertelsen: It is an increasingly global marketplace. I think that only adds value to our stories as Latinos, as people of color, and women in a world where we have to make up the majority. I think the goal is to find a way to reach that audience.

Ramírez: I often hear that a film has to have a universal appeal. How as a filmmaker of color and you want to make a film that portrays the experience of your community in a way that’s appealing? How can we make films that can get picked up by distributors?

Kohli: From a South Asian angle, filmmakers like Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta tell South Asian stories, but these are not stories for the South Asian market. These are stories that people all over the world want to hear. I think a good film from any angle, the simplest way for you to have a barometer is if people can somehow relate to it. A story we can feel, we can be a part of. That in the simplest form is a success. If you can take what is in your film to an audience that is not you…you don’t want people like you sitting in the audience watching this film, but you want people who are not like you to be able to see like you. Vanaja that went to over 100 festivals and won about 30 awards was released by Emerging Pictures, it did numbers that were less than 10% in South Asian markets. Be able to convince someone who’s not you about the story. I think people want not to educated the audience with every film. Try not to beat them on the head with it. You can get the story across in a way that delivers the message, but if you’re going for an audience that’s not your core audience, you need to make it slightly easy for them.

Bertelsen: The onus on us as filmmakers of color is to prove those economics. In addition to all the things to get in the room, be prepared to make the argument with the market research.

Matías: To get back to the issue of Quinceañera, the film did not have a script when they got the money. They had an idea. They had lived in the neighborhood. They had been involved with the whole ceremony of the quinceañeras. They were connected to a whole group of people who had money. It was the group of people who gave them the money, and they said, now I have to go out and make a script. They made the script in a very short amount of time. The reason that film works is they worked with the community. They found the Madrina, the woman in the community who really knew how to teach everyone how to participate in a quinceañera ceremony. That’s really what gave the film its authenticity of a right of passage for a young woman.

(Jayce Bartok, Mary Stuart Masterson & Maria Pusateri talk about The Cake Eaters.)

Tuesday night at Two Boots Pioneer Theater in New York, Cinewomen NY presented a screening of Mary Stuart Masterson’s directorial debut, The Cake Eaters. Masterson discussed the making of her film (and in the end commented on the current state of the independent film industry) during a Q&A along with screenwriter/co-producer Jayce Bartok and producer Jesse Scolaro.

The Cake Eaters is a quirky, small town, ensemble drama that explores the lives of two interconnected families coming to terms with love in the face of loss. The ensemble cast includes Bruce Dern, Jayce Bartok, Elizabeth Ashley, Miriam Shore, Jesse L. Martin, Aaron Standford and Kristen Stewart.

It premiered at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival (read A.M. Peters’ notes here from the Bringing Home the Bacon panel at Tribeca where Masterson was a panelist) and later played at the 2007 Woodstock Film Festival (where I took notes at the Amazing Women in Film panel that Masterson also spoke on).

Below are some highlights of the questions asked starting with Cinewomen NY’s Maria Pusateri.

Pusateri: What steps did you take to make yourself ready to transition from acting to directing?

Masterson: I think sometimes people think directing is a promotion from acting, and that’s just not it. I didn’t want more control or power. If I had been in the movie and I was directing it, maybe. I’ve always wanted to direct. I’ve always written. I had a bunch of projects for years…sixteen years since I wrote the first draft of one script that had three casts, four production companies, people with suitcases full of money, Japanese attaches, girlfriends…and it’s all true. None of those movies got made. Two that I was directing that I didn’t write that I was working on with various producers. In part, I’ve been writing a lot for a lot of years…re-writing mostly is what writing is…and developing material. I spent a lot of time doing that, sort of like my day job for 10 years, despite the fact that occasionally I had to take work to making a living as an actress. A lot of times projects that I was working on would fall apart when I was taking a job as an actress. For The Cake Eaters, Jayce and I had the same agent and he gave me the script and I thought it was wonderful and had great characters and great heart. We started working on the script together for a number of months and I was presented the opportunity to do a Broadway musical and I said, if I do this, this is going to fall apart again. So the gamble paid off. I did a lot of homework, a lot of reading working with great actors, great directors over the years, and really bad directors. And then I directed a half-hour film for Showtime that is a science fiction short. That’s great training, a half-hour short…a stupid length. It’s too long, it’s too short. Don’t do it, don’t try it. But it was great training.

Q: What about this material spoke to you and how involved were you in the casting process?

Masterson: The material I thought was very unusual in that it had an innocence and timelessness about it. Instead of trying to change that, we just embraced it full on. For one thing, the names, come on…Beagle, Easy! These are great character names. I think it’s a world that is lovely and kind of rare. The struggle that we had in terms of developing the script to be ready to shoot was he wrote so many stories in this one story and it was hard to tell, was this The Last Picture Show or Nashville, that kind of many, many character stories. That was a challenge that we both struggled with. I was very involved with casting. We had a casting director and casting sessions. The horrible part was sometimes they brought people in that I already knew or had worked with or liked or was friends with to read a three-line part. I wouldn’t have asked my friend to read that part for me and put it on tape. It’s embarrassing. And yet the amazing thing was that the people who did come in and read that I didn’t ask to read…the incredible preparation and the choices that were made, it was really beautiful how many people came out and wanted to be a part of this. Then there were people who didn’t audition. Kristen, I had just met. She loved her character and was willing to go the distance with the research and didn’t in any way, shy away from extra time spent on the role. And I also I just met Aaron. Bruce, I wrote a letter and Elizabeth claims I seduced her, but I think it was the other way around. The woman made me drink a half a bottle of wine.

Q: Was pre-production or post-production more difficult?

Masterson: The obvious answer for this project might be post because we made some changes and actually went back and did a little extra shooting. We just re-wrote the material and restructured it a bit. In a way, that was more difficult, but we had a great situation where we had support from our producers and our financiers to really get it right and approach it in the most thorough and appropriate way. It was never terrible. I loved prep. We had months and months together working on the script before we even got a green light to do it, so that wasn’t hard. I think a movie is made in three drafts for a director. Your first draft is in prep…how you visualize it on the page, how you set it up so you can shoot it realistically on budget and on time. And then your second draft is what happens when you’re actually shooting. And the third draft is in the editing room. You just see it fresh and start from scratch. Hopefully it all fits the way you planned. You just have to embrace that as part of the process.

Q: How did you get Duncan Sheik to compose the music in the film when he was working on the Broadway musical Spring Awakening?

Masterson: I was interested in the idea. His agent made that a possibility. He’s really got a great sensibility for this because he’s very sensitive to these characters in this world and gets it and writes mostly beautiful melodies. He also understood in particular Beagle’s character and his not wanting to make it sound too small town and hokey. He used electric instruments instead of just acoustic. I thought his instinct sounded really good. It just seemed right, however, her was about to go into rehearsal for Spring Awakening. I had done a Broadway musical a couple of years prior and thought, dude, do you have any idea what you’re about to go through?

Q: What kind of dynamic did you and Mary have on set in terms of actor and director? What was the most difficult process of directing?

Bartok: We had a good dynamic on the set. The pre-production I think was very intense. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. We spent countless hours talking about it passionately trying to find the story. Once the process of was over for me as an actor, then I went to the set to take on another job. I think that was great relief. It was like a whole other chapter in the process.

Masterson: This dynamic in a way was the most difficult because we were both equally passionate about it. Some things we disagreed about, ultimately fighting for the story and the characters. And then to step into the other relationship, which is I want to nurture you and love you and help you do your best. The other part of that relationship is that some of this material is personal to Jayce and I didn’t want to know how that was personal to him, because I tend to be a bit of a caretaker, and I wanted to be kind of a hard ass if I needed to be and not know that’s my brother you’re talking about. I probably inadvertently was kind of hard core about things.

Bartok: In a good way.

Masterson: I still don’t know. Most difficult in general is probably not losing your own vision and voice as you go through with a lot of people’s opinions coming at you…mostly in post. I don’t think I lost that at all in any point till post. Everybody’s got a valid point and were all talking about different things, and I was losing focus. I just wanted everybody to get along.

Bartok: It was good for me to have that perspective because it was my first script and was personal. If Mary Stuart hadn’t come along and had that perspective, it wouldn’t have become a film. That’s just the reality. These processes are very artistic and intense. When you get through them, you’re like wow, I’m really proud I went through that process and didn’t go cuckoo.

Pusateri: You worked with your brother who was the cinematographer. What was that like?

Masterson: He did a great job. I love my brother a lot. We have a short hand and it’s very easy. He was actually living at my house while we were doing this. We drove 40 minutes to and from the set every day and talked about the work, what happened or what we could do better. We shot on HD. My brother is sort of a technological wizard and hadn’t shot HD before and did a lot of homework. Fortunately, we made sure to do some camera tests. We both learned a lot about HD and what we could do to get more of a film look.

Q: Can you talk about the title of the film?

Bartok: It’s a term that was used in Pennsylvania where I grew up to describe the wealthy and those who had their lives kind of laid out for them…the cake eaters who live up on the hill in a nice house. When I wrote these characters, I thought they are so not the cake eaters. And through the course of these couple of days, they sort of get the cake and eat it too. I liked it as this sort of mysterious metaphor for this kind of band of misfits. It definitely raises some opinions. People get excited and passionate about The Cake Eaters title.

Q: What are your plans for distribution?

Scolaro: We started a distribution company and are going to put it out ourselves. This came after a lot of research and talking to a lot of different distributors out there and getting their take on what they would do with the movie versus what we wanted to do with the movie collectively, and what the audiences were telling us as we traveled around the country showing it. It was the first movie I’ve ever been involved with where theater chains were saying, we want to show your movie, but distributors were not really putting forth anything that was very sensible. In lieu of that, we said, we’re filmmakers so why not do that part of filmmaking that very few filmmakers do and actually distribute the movie as well. This way we know everything from development through distribution and we don’t need to rely on other people to tell us if our movie is good or bad. I think more filmmakers are going to start doing that. They’re going to say, if my movie has an audience, which hopefully it does, there are ways to get your movie to that audience and it’s not brain science. It just takes hard work and some thought and a lot of time. It’s going to be released around Valentine’s Day next year. We’re going to start in the South in Arizona, Texas and Florida. We’re going to work our way north as the weather gets a little better.

Q: With the culture of independent film being what it is with the small independents folding into their bigger studios, what is the future of independent film and distribution?

Masterson: The state of things is a little scary right now. I think everybody’s wondering what’s going to happen with digital downloads? All the deals are being re-negotiated for direct output deals of DVD sales or the payroll companies even. Everything’s up for review all at once, and of course all these strikes. Everybody’s kind of trying to figure out where the money coming from…who gets part of what revenue. Financiers specifically don’t know how to break even anymore. There’s a lot of new models for distribution being presented. I think some combination of all of these things is definitely going to work differently for each film. It used to be, when I started out, you market a film doing regional junkets. You went to Chicago, Dallas, New York, LA and sometimes Japan and Europe. You actually did a lot of press everywhere that you went. You didn’t just rely on these giant pipelines of Time Warner or whatever these massive companies bring to bare. For independents to try to penetrate this crazy market, it’s really hard. There will be more and more ways. It’s just going to be, I think, on an individual basis. You have to decide what makes the most sense for your film. I don’t think films at film festivals are really going to necessarily get advances for theatrical release anymore. That’s kind of a thing of the past. Maybe it will come back. Eliminating the middle man makes a lot of sense for an independent film that’s living so close to the bone. Like Jesse said, on our film, we had personally gone to all these different places and talked to people about what they did and didn’t like. We’ve seen age group responds and which ones are less interested. We kind of know how to target it pretty much. Who cares more than us about it? Nobody. Nobody taking a fee is going to care more than we do. If there is a way to get it into theaters or whatever DVD deals we make later, then why don’t we just do it ourselves? I think a lot of people will if they have the opportunity. They’re making more service deals than ever before where some company takes a percentage and find a creative way to release the movie. I think it’s a scary and very interesting time. It frees up a lot of bandwidth for people whose movies have just gone to festivals and not been released. There’s going to be an alternative…I hope.