Adult FRIEND Finder

DREE HEMINGWAY is a sweet porn star and BESEDKA JOHNSON Best Actress winner at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival is the mysteriously bitter older woman she befriends in SEAN BAKERs sun-streaked relationship drama, Starlet. Interview by SCOTT MACAULAY.

he sun hits hard in the San Fernando Valley. It bleaches the landscape, shining deep into the lives of those who live there. Captured in widescreen, anamorphic photography in Sean Bakers new feature, Starlet, the Valley, which for decades has been the home of much of Americas adult film industry, is no longer the ersatz Hollywood of Paul Thomas Andersons 1970s-set drama, Boogie Nights. Gone are 35mm and pseudo-glamorous premieres, having been replaced by pixelated webcam
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shows and quickie video shoots destined to screen on chain hotel PPV networks. As also captured several years ago in artist Larry Sultans documentary photographs, todays Valley, reflecting the lives it contains, is a more ordinary place which is not to say that its not full of human stories. Continuing the string of neo-neo-realist movies he began in New York City with Take Out and Prince of Broadway, Baker has with Starlet crafted one such tale into a surprising and warmly resonant relationship drama

that may also be his breakout picture. Starlet uses the San Fernando Valleys porn industry as an almost distant backdrop, focusing primarily on an unlikely rapport between its porn star heroine, Jane (Dree Hemingway), and an older woman, Sadie (Besedka Johnson), who Jane meets when she buys a coffee urn from her at a yard sale. Discovering $10,000 inside, Jane contemplates returning the urn, but Sadies hostile bitterness is so off-putting that the younger woman reconsiders her good deed. As the film pro-

Dree Hemingway in Starlet

PHOTO COURTESY OF MUSIC BOX FILMS

gresses, following Jane as she attends a porn convention, makes a film and tangles with a treacherous, coked-up roommate, the source of Sadies relentless bile becomes a mystery Jane is determined to solve. Yes, Starlet is a film about an unexpected friendship, and it succeeds due to the unforced ease with which Baker captures its unfolding through a pair of astonishing central performances. Clad in hot pants, tube socks and sneakers, the radiant, utterly natural Hemingway daughter of Mariel

and great-granddaughter of Ernest plays Jane as a sweet innocent, entirely lacking in guile. As Sadie, the 85-year-old Johnson is one of those unexpected discoveries you go to independent films to find. Discovered at a YMCA bingo hall by one of the films producers, Johnson finds layers of sadness within her characters anger, and she breaks your heart as that anger gradually thaws. And then theres the light, the heat of that California sun. Baker and d.p. Radium Cheung capture it with 1970s Russian ana-

morphic lens, giving the film a polished look, far away from the gritty handheld of the directors earlier features. I spoke with Baker at an outdoor cafe in New Yorks East Village as his dog the films eponymous Starlet lay at his feet. Starlet will be released by Music Box Films on November 9. So, youre on the fall festival circuit with Starlet. Im looking forward to traveling with the film. Thats what I see as compenFILMMAKER FALL 2012 57

Writer/director Sean Baker with actress Besedka Johnson on the set of Starlet

sation for directors on these sorts of budgets. Im actually wording that in my contract these days, that I control the festival circuit. The priority before screening fees is allowing the filmmakers not just myself, but everybody involved to travel to the festivals as much as we can. I thought Id spend a year traveling after I produced my first film. But first, I learned that festivals dont care as much about producers attending. And second, I realized I couldnt afford it. I had to work. You just have to learn how to do work on the road. I dont think Im going to travel as much with Starlet because I have two other projects that I want to get off the ground right away. But with Prince of Broadway, the producer and I spent a year and a half going everywhere we saw the world. It was also necessary because we didnt have a foreign sales rep. And we were able to make some sales.

What happened after college? A couple years out of NYU, I was lucky enough to get a job shooting a commercial for a small publishing company. Grandfathering all the materials from that, and buying all the unused raw stock off 12 Monkeys, the Terry Gilliam film, we shot a small film called Four Letter Words on 35mm for $45,000. Its a very young movie imagine a social realist Kevin Smith film. Its dialogue-based and not

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I always think about you as a filmmaker in terms of Take Out, Prince of Broadway, and now Starlet. But youve actually already had an even longer career. Could you take us back to the beginning? How did you begin making films? I grew up in Jersey, and Ive wanted to make films from as far back as grade school. My mother brought me to the local library where they [screened] Universal horror films. I remember seeing the windmill sequence in Frankenstein and one or two sequences in The Mummy and Dracula and saying, This is what I want to do. It was definitely that clich that you hear from a lot of American filmmakers of my age: we had Super 8 [cameras] growing up, and then we got our VHS camcorders and made films throughout our junior high school and high school years. I edited the video yearbook and was head of the AV Club. Then I went to NYU Film School undergraduate, intending to make very Hollywood films the next Die Hard. But it was while I was at NYU that

I discovered the [Jefferson Market] Library over on 6th Avenue, and they had free VHS rentals. There was a box cover of this girls knee that looked quite attractive, so I discovered Eric Rohmer and Claires Knee. This was during my sophomore year, and the next thing I knew I was watching as many foreign films as I could. Then I started taking film studies courses having to do with foreign cinema. I took a Pasolini course, I discovered British social realism and I fell in love with Ken Loach and Mike Leigh.

very plot-driven basically my take on suburbia, U.S.A. It was originally based, sort of, on Rashomon, and it had this Mystery Train, nonlinear storytelling style. In post-production, it didnt work at all. I was editing on a Steenbeck, and it took me four or five years, until 2000, to figure out that it had to be told in a linear style. [When youre in] your twenties you dont feel the burden of time as much; youre not as driven to finish a project as fast as you should. The film wound up playing at SXSW Matt Dentler was the first champion of the film and it got a nice, modest little DVD release. I havent watched it in 10 years, but Im proud of it. I think its a very realistic look at that world of post-adolescent guys in the suburbs. And also, it allowed me to get that out of my system. That [film] was basically all I wanted to say about the world that I grew up in, and afterwards I was ready and willing to explore other cultures and other places. How did you support yourself during the five years of making this film? A lot of temp work and menial jobs. And then, on July 5th of 01, Dan Milano, Spencer Chinoy and myself were a little hung over from the night before and decided to take our VHS camcorder into Tompkins Square Park. We were making a show for Public Access, The Manhattan Neighborhood Network a half-hour show with this puppet we had lying around. We interviewed people in the park with this puppet we called Greg the Bunny, based it around political commentary, and the next thing you know IFC is asking us to use the puppet in interstitial material. Suddenly, with this puppet, we were introducing these independent films

I want to keep working in the genre of human drama and relationship pieces, in which human interaction is the focal point.
that we adored and were inspired by. For the next couple of years, we parodied these movies with the puppet for the IFC Channel. Greg the Bunny then moved from IFC to Fox, and then back to IFC. Two years ago we did a spin-off for MTV. So Greg the Bunny, which was basically just a comedy show in which my friends and I fooled around with puppets, has supported me for 10 years. I mean, Ive still had to take editing jobs and entertain temp work. Has Greg the Bunny helped you launch your own very different film projects? Its given me the chance to work in comedy television with actors who are amazing at improvisational comedy. And because it was such a low budget, such a casual way of shooting, it set me up in a way to use those same techniques when it came to shooting my own films. It has also given me one foot in with the Hollywood system. Its been easier to introduce my films to the people Ive worked with. I say, Well, you know, I also do independent films that are very different, but take a look. I think youll see that theres a similar sensibility underneath the surface level. So what happened with your feature career after that first wave of Greg the Bunny on IFC? I was a bit discouraged. I was seeing these filmmakers Id gone to school with Todd Phillips, Marc Forster start to make waves. Their careers were taking off. I wanted to get back to my true love, cinema. So, in 03 Shih-Ching Tsou and I were living above a Chinese takeout on 20th Street. This was shortly after the Dogma 95 movement kicked in. Digital cinema had allowed filmmakers to make films for nothing, and they were being accepted. We were barely paying rent at the time, but we decided to make a small New York film in which you see in the apartments of all these different New Yorkers through the eyes of a Chinese delivery guy. And when we actually did our research, exploring different take-outs in the city and sitting down with these gentlemen, it became a whole different thing. It became more about the plight of the undocumented worker. It was just Shih-Ching and I doing everything with our very dedicated actor, Charles Jang, who played the lead, as our third crew member. The three of us made Take Out over the course of June 03. I think it was the rainiest June in recorded history. Every day wed walk outside and thank God because we had a constant production design. Take Out was done and delivered to the festivals for $3,000. It got us attention on the festival circuit, but unfortunately, when we got distribution through CAVU Pictures, they couldnt release the film because they were a little backlogged. I didnt know what I was supposed to do but to go off and make another film. Again, I pulled the money all from Greg the Bunny and made, as solo director, Prince of Broadway. It was during postproduction on Prince of Broadway that I told the team, You know, we have to get Take Out out there as well. Take Out will support Prince, and Prince will support Take Out. So, we worked with CAVE on a hybrid [distribution plan]. I put in some money to expedite [Take Out] into theaters, and we released it as I was in post-production on Prince. The films competed against one another at the Spirit Awards, and the perception was that they were made at the same time and that I was so prolific. Actually, there had been years of frustration building up to that point. I think [those movies] just set in place where I wanted to go as a filmmaker and what sort of subjects I wanted to cover. And that led eventually to Starlet. So, what were the beginnings of Starlet? Im drawn to films that blur that line between docu and narrative. I want to keep working in the genre of human drama and relationship pieces, in which human interaction is the focal point. This film about an unlikely
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HOW THEY DID IT

Production Format HD. Camera Sony F3 S-Log with Vintage Lomo Anamorphic lenses. Film/Tape Stock ProRes 422 recorded on Cinedeck Extreme. Editing System Final Cut Pro and Avid Symphony. Color Correction Avid Symphony.

Besedka Johnson and Dree Hemingway in Starlet

SHORTBUS John Cameron Mitchells 2006 smart porn drama mixes explicit sex with an ensemble drama to create a more sophistical erotic tale.

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friendship intrigued me because Ive always wanted to befriend somebody older than me. Older people are encyclopedias, they have so much knowledge and life experience, and this is something Ive always wanted to do. I was working on another New York film, which Im still intending to do. Its a Brighton Beach story, a much bigger film. While we were looking for our producers and backers, I was here in New York. I had just done another incarnation of Greg the Bunny in L.A., and [the city] was still fresh in my head. We had been doing a lot of stunt casting on that show because it was an MTV show and the demographic was 16- to 20-something-year-old guys. We decided to try to fill every episode with an adult film star. You know, youre on a television set, you have a lot of downtime, a lot of time to socialize and communicate. I got to know several of these adult performers and became extremely interested in what their daily lives were like. I found that between the shoots, they were living everyday lives the same way we do. Almost mundane lives, waiting for the next adventure to happen. So, I came back to New York, and I wanted to make something right away. I spoke with my co-writer, Christopher Bergoch: Maybe

we should make a small docu-style cinema vrit film about one of these women in L.A. working in that industry. We dont even have to touch on that world. We can know that she works there, but thats it. The biggest drama piece in the film is going to be a scene in which she loses her dog. Chris suggested

GO BACK & WATCH

BOOGIE NIGHTS Paul Thomas Andersons 1997 breakout drama follows the porn industry in the late 1970s and the people (Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, etc.) who made it work. THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE Steven Soderberghs 2009 erotic drama casts actual adult film actress Sasha Grey to survey the world of professional high-end escorts.

we make it slightly more mainstream accessible by making it more plot driven. He suggested I use an idea that I had sitting on the back burner called Lithograph. It was based on a real-life event that happened to a friend of the family in which money was found at a yard sale. And so, we combined the two ideas and came up with Starlet. Money was found pretty quickly. Ted Hope was extremely helpful in this process. I gave Ted the scriptment, and he said, Im going to do my best to get you some backers, and he did within weeks. When you say scriptment, whats that? It wasnt a full script. It was about a 70-page script, which meant that there were areas in which we allowed for improvisation on set. Some scenes were completely fleshed out like a traditional script, with the dialogue written out in Final Draft. But then, there were other scenes where it was just a paragraph: The three sit on the couch, smoke weed and talk about the videogames. When I approached my actors, Id say, Okay, this is an opportunity for us to just play on set. We will come up with a number of topics the night before and then well just roll with it on set.

Was it always your intention to withhold Janes profession as an adult film star from your audience until the middle of the film? Many other films that cover the adult film industry make it the A plot. Its the most important thing, and it defines the characters. I wanted to break that convention. Nobodys career defines them. Its our spirit, our intelligence, our humor; its us as human beings. I didnt want to make this film about the adult industry, and I didnt want to reveal to the audience [Janes profession] right away because in 2012 there is still a stigma, there are preconceived notions [about the porn industry]. I wanted the audience to get to know this character first and then drop it on them. And to almost experiment to see how audiences would react to the character, to Dree playing Jane, and to us as filmmakers making this movie. Its experimenting with the judgments people bring to the table. You employed a consultant, an adult actress, who attended the premiere at SXSW. Zoe Voss. Zoe is wonderful. It was important for me for Zoe to come to the premiere and give her take on [the film]. And Ive been actually very interested in the [reactions from the]

Nobodys career defines them. Its our spirit, our intelligence, our humor; its us as human beings.
people in the industry who have seen it. What have they been? They were all very positive and thought that [the film] approached this [subject] in a very different way. They respected that. And I was happy to hear that we were pretty accurate in our portrayal. People always question why [someone] gets into this industry, and what Ive found is that there are a million reasons. There is not just the one clich that they were abused when they were young. Yes, that of course is out there, but everybody seems to have their own individual story. That was one of the reasons that we didnt really focus on [the reasons Jane entered porn]. We hinted that she had had turbulent relationships. Perhaps she was from a single-parent family. She obviously had some sort of a broken relationship with her mom. But we didnt really want to focus on that because, number one, plenty of other films have already done it. And, number two, [because of] our research process and getting to know everybody. I thought it was unfair to say that its all because of one reason. How many days did you shoot the film? I believe it was 24. Visually the film has a different feel than your previous films. The L.A. environment is a big part of that, but youve also approached the shooting quite in a different way. I wanted the film to have a sheen, and I wanted to put as much of our limited amount of money see page 80

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people who lead you on and then drop you down. You go on that kind of roller coaster. Very soon, I realized that if I sort of pitched this script at the usual suspects, that Id have one foot in the grave before anyone even read the rst page. I had one meeting where at the end someone said, So I know hes in an iron lung, but its not like theres a cure for that. [They both laugh.] I think he was hoping at the end, couldnt he just kind of pop out of the lung? Ive been through all that in the past. I knew what was coming and I didnt want to get myself angry and bitter by exposing myself to all of that again. So I took advantage of circumstances, which were that there was one Melbourne businessman friend who was willing to play, and the Australian dollar was unusually strong against the U.S. dollar. Judi [Levine, Lewins wife and the producer of The Sessions] and I went around to our friends and family in Melbourne and put together the budget from people who were totally nave [laughs] and believed that the crucial element in making the lm was the script. Oh my gosh. Well, now theyre going to think that this is how it works all the time. Yes, I do feel a pang of guilt about that. [Laughs] [Laughs] You spoiled them. But this really did prove to be the right formula for this lm. And the truth is, we had no one looking over our shoulder. Whilst there were times when you think, Oh, God, I wish someone was looking over my shoulder telling me what to do, by and large, that kind of freedom is very rare, and I think in the telling of this story, absolutely essential. One thing I can say is that the day that I visited you guys on location, there was a nice, relaxed, collegial atmosphere and it made me think that everybody was clearly enjoying the freedom and on the same page. There was a lack of stress or anxiety that was palpable, and I think it really shows in the nal lm. I made a conscious decision that, unlike previous lms, I was not going to make every day a nightmare. When people have said to me, Oh, it must be fun directing lms, Ive said, Youve gotta be out of your fucking mind. I mean, its a nightmare. Excuse my French, but typically every day on set on a big feature lm, youre just praying to get to the end of the day intact and go to bed. I was determined, partly because I just wanted to be sane and alive at the end of it, that every day was not going to be like that and that I would take my crossword to work with me, and that I would be in my own little
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cocoon of serenity and hopefully other people would take that as an example. I really was determined to enjoy the process. If they feel that from you, it gives people permission to relax in a way that can be very productive. I wanted to feel that, on my lm set, a stranger wouldnt be able to gure out who the director was. I didnt even call action; I had the rst assistant call action. And, really, I had certain advantages. One was that the cameraman was living with us, so that we spent a lot of time preparing. We knew exactly what we were going to do for every scene ahead of time, so that there was no hair tearing on set wondering where the shot was. One of the things that forced us to prepare very thoroughly was Johns insistence and my concurrence in the fact that he was only going to have a 90 degree movement of his head, and that limited where the camera could be in every shot. There was only one side that we could shoot on, which forced us to plan every shot pretty meticulously and meant that we arrived on set knowing what was happening. I only wish that I could bottle our attitude and somehow use it as a formula. [Laughs] I dont know whether I could do it again.

ADULT FRIEND FINDER

from page 61 up on the screen as possible. Also, Id already done two films that were very handheld, gritty, traditional, 1:1.85 aspect ratio. I wanted to explore using anamorphic framing with real anamorphic lenses and to take advantage of the L.A. landscape. I spent two months in preproduction exploring the Valley, and I wanted to capture its expanse, and the way the light plays its extremely bright, always in your eyes. I knew that using classic, old anamorphic lenses would capture these flares that I wanted to capture. And then this happy accident happened. Radium Cheung, the d.p., got an email that was mistakenly sent to him from a guy in Santa Clarita. He had some classic old LOMOs about 100 anamorphic lens that he got from the Soviet Union when it fell. He had them rehoused, has been renting them for very little, and theyre beautiful. They gave us a look that I dont think we wouldve been able to capture any other way. Im actually really happy with [the look] because even though Ive shot the last three films digitally, Im still one of those guys whos not completely sold [on the format]. Ive had to shoot that way for economic reasons, but I am still in the Christopher Nolan camp. I feel that if you can, you should

shoot on film. Or at least try to do something with your digital material so youre not just looking at ones and zeros. What kind of lighting? Radium likes to say we didnt light, but we did. He comes from a gaffing background, a gaffer background, but [we used] a lot of practicals, but also subtle, soft lighting. We had our bounce boards. We had our lanterns. We had our Par Cans for some night exteriors. With the [Sony] F3, we were able to shoot with much less light than normal, but still, there was subtlety in the lighting and time taken for that. Tell me a little bit about the challenges of working with a first-time actor whos an older actor. [Besedka] is 85 years old, and the amount of hours that youre working in the hot Valley sun makes it a different situation. You have to be very aware of this. At the same time, though, she was found working out at the YMCA. Shes in amazing shape and was able to put up with the tough situations better than most of our crew. But, I have to say that, well, first off, she was just wonderful, ready to jump into any situation. Also, shes always been on the fringe of the industry. She was best friends with Dudley Moore. She always wanted to pursue acting. So it wasnt like I was working with a nonprofessional even though she had never acted before. If there was ever a real-life Maude, shes that person. As in Harold and Maude? Yes. She is full of life, full of positivity. It was actually very difficult to get to that place where she had to be that nasty, abrasive, reclusive older woman. She didnt want to go there. The first two or three takes of every scene, she would be way too nice to the Jane character. We would be like, Besedka, you gotta bring up the nastiness. Theres an old Our Gang short, Second Childhood, in which [the gangs] little remotecontrol airplane flies through the window of an older womans mansion, and they end up having to work for her for the afternoon. But their childlike innocence and sense of wonder winds up helping her. We showed that short to Besedka and said, We want you to go to this place. Our Gang has always been a big influence of mine, even with Prince of Broadway. The big scene in Prince where Aiden slaps Prince Adu in the face over and over again comes from an Our Gang short. When you are conceiving of these kind of observational, neo-neo-realist films, what are your thoughts about their narrative needs? How much story does a film like Starlet need? I dont want to reveal the ending, so Ill just note that

the film has a very pointed narrative reveal at the end. Was that always there? Yes, that was in that original bric-a-brac story I did. And so, the storyline was always going to be based on a major reveal, right? As Chris and I started working on [the script], we realized that we were also going to be revealing something major in the middle of the film that Janes a porn star. And then, we just [made that concept of the reveal] as our subtext, using it on many different levels, trying to get [reveals] into the film as much as possible, whether they were minor or major. We tried to play with the idea that you never really know everything about somebody elses life; as you get to know people, its all a process of reveals. After Take Out and Prince of Broadway, how did you feel about staying within the realm of ultra low-budget filmmaking? Is it hard to stay at such low levels of budgets? Yes. I dont want to come across like Im complaining, but its very hard to stay at this level. Its extremely difficult. I mean, I dont have a family. This guy [Baker motions to his dog] is the only guy I have to support. I dont see how I would be able to do this if I actually had to support a family. But I think what this model of [nobudget] filmmaking allows is if you can make two of these, maybe even one if its extremely successful, itll get you to the next level where you dont have to put your own money in anymore. With Starlet, were sort of threequarters there. We had backers, it was funded basically by other people, but, in the end, because of the nature of independent film, were all still wearing many hats. Im still typing up time code and dialogue lists every day. Were doing festival print traffic ourselves. So while these budgets are difficult and frustrating on a daily or hourly basis, its a catch- 22 because [the films are] so rewarding in the end. Im almost worried about getting bigger with these films because I fear losing the happy accidents, the spontaneity. Hopefully my future producers will agree that we have to do whatever we can do to not have 100 percent control, you know? Money gets control, but I feel as if you still allow yourself some chaos... With all three films, the chaos and happy accidents have led to my favorite material in all three films. Is there an example of that on this film? There are many examples. We almost had enough money to bring on a real starlet of yesteryear. She was very well-known and hasnt acted in a while. It was going to be her big return. But of course, not having the money to completely secure her, having to work within SAG Ultra

Indie, $100 a day, we werent able to get her. It was through the chaos of everybody being very frustrated and upset that Shih-Ching went off to work out at the YMCA and found Besedka Johnson. The strip pole scene the apartment that we were shooting at, it happened to be a real model house, and the guy who owned it wanted to install a strip pole. So, its about sometimes allowing your environment to dictate things. This issue of the magazine is our 20th anniversary, and Im asking people to envision their next 20 years. How do you see yourself developing as a filmmaker? I feel that its becoming such a different world now, with the unfortunate demise of the theaters and television taking over in such a drastic way. I feel as if Im just getting my foot in as the door is slamming shut. Im such a cinephile, and Im in love with the hour-and-a-half to two-and-a-half-hour model of this art form, of cinema, that I would love to continue working in it. But of course, I see the genius thats taking place in these long-form cable shows. I would love to work in that medium as well. Obviously its been a way for directors to support themselves. They work in television, and then work in film on the side. Perhaps film will just become a very specialized art form that you can only do once in a while. So if digital filmmaking and this lowbudget model allows for us to be more prolific, for us to express ideas quicker I feel the same way as you do, and I see so many people for whom the idea of following up a successful film with a smaller feature is kind of an anathema. A lot of people have bought into the idea that a film career has to proceed linearly and upward. That mindset stops them from being playful, doing something more spontaneous. Ive been battling with that right now, actually. I have the opportunity to do a smaller film than Starlet, and I probably will do that. Do you worry, then, about being known as the guy who makes small films? No, but Im thinking about how Im going to pay the bills. However, when I look at the filmmakers who have been most influential in my life, they have always jumped back and forth between different budgets throughout their careers. Look at Ken Loach. The Dardennes they did a 35mm [film] and went back to 16mm and smaller budgets. I really respect the Safdie brothers. Theyre making some short films right now. Theyre being very successful with these short films and then theyre going back to a feature, Im sure, for their next project. I dont know if I could do that I dont

consider myself a good short filmmaker. But I want to experiment, and thats a great way of looking at things.

TROUBLED ASSETS
from page 65 as an underscore. You can create moods and feelings with sounds that have a visual effect on you without it being like the laugh track that music can be. I always feel sort of inherently manipulated by music that behaves that way. I prefer to use sound, I guess, to conjure up feelings and to then have music create the sense of distance in a movie rather than a sense of involvement. The sound is all designed from that point of view. Some of my favorite moments are because of the sound design, I love the long scene between Brad and James Gandolni. I was just about to mention that scene. The sound in that scene is just fantastic. Its just this weird sort of piano that oats around and creates this perspective and its really very subtle. Because of my hearing, I cant do music that goes to a really low bass or really high treble sounds. So we would go through [the scenes], add in all the sounds we could think of, and then constantly stroke them back. I like to cut the picture so that theres a certain ambiguity to a scene. Often, sound or music can really fuck that up. So you have to be very, very careful. Another scene between Gandolni and Brad Pitt that I found really interesting was the scene in the hotel, in part because its so lugubrious and has seemingly so little to do with the forward movement of the plot. And yet, you learn so much about those two men in that scene. Well, you know, theres another thing going on in the story that is also going on in the movie: its a little bit of a treatise on masculinity. All the male characters in the story, even Brad, seem to have some woman that theyre fucked up about. Or that theyre destroyed over. The movie is basically about people doing stuff for money. Its about grim men at work. We dont really see anyone in their private space. Theyre always in their spaces where they talk or conduct business. And all of them seem to be, to some extent, having to repress how they feel in order to make a buck. They dont seem to be aware of how unhappy they are. Thats something else thats going on in the picture. Im not a big one for plot. Its great when you can nd the plot that demonstrates the theme that you like, but what makes movies memorable for me is the people the characters and the picture of [human] nature. Rather than the plot,
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