Assholes hits VOD on October 24th, and I got a few minutes to chat with Peter Vack, the writer/director of what is probably one of my favorite dark horses of the year, who also starred in the film opposite his sister. Assholes was his feature length debut that premiered at SXSW and became one of the most divisive films to hit the festival circuit this year with its story of two recovering addicts that fall in love and relapse, turning into the two biggest assholes in New York. It was an amazing cinematic feat to say the least, and I got a few minutes to chat with Peter, who discusses not only the critics’ reaction to the film, but how it felt making such an audacious piece of cinema while casting most of his immediate family.
Assholes seems very influenced by the Mumblecore movement. Was Assholes your sort of statement on those films?
Well that’s an interesting narrative that maybe you and a handful of other journalists have picked up on. But the truth is my intention was not to further the mumblecore discussion or to skewer the mumblecore genre. I wasn’t thinking the word mumblecore at all. Even though I do have an appreciation for some of those filmmakers and some of those films. I think that perhaps, just sort of coming of age in the time that I did and acting in independent films, maybe I am just not aware of how deep those influential roots are for me.
I do really enjoy when we are sort of finding a scene, going off script and improving, and I know many of the mumblecore filmmakers also did that. It’s something I more saw in editing, when we were scrutinizing every frame of footage, we would have fun talking about how the beginning presented the movie as if it was something done by Joe Swanberg or something by Lena Dunham and how that just deteriorated. What I think is so cool about filmmaking or any art making, the maker has their own private intentions and it’s very interesting and cool to see how viewers conceive of what they did and sometimes its not what the maker had in mind and that’s a beautiful thing.
Well I think that’s what to me was so effective about the film was the beginning kind of lulls the viewer into a certain sense of security because we’ve all seen that film before, and 30 minutes later they are summoning a shit demon.
Well I will say this, when I was in the writing process of the script, I started writing something you know which is funny and perhaps incriminating to say, given the apple fell so close to home. I do feel like I grew up in New York City, around people who are in analysis; I’m in analysis, my mother is a psychoanalyst, and so just sort of our world of where people articulate their feelings and there is like an emotional fluidity and privilege. As I was writing it there was something in me that didn’t want to make that kind of movie as a filmmaker. So what happened in the writing process was I was rebelling against the tone of my own life and sort of exploding a bomb in this sort idea of where I as a person was then situated like culturally and experientially.
So what were some of the cinematic touch stones that influenced the film?
Well its funny because I am not as much of a cinephile as other filmmakers. I’m still sort of late to the game when it comes to a lot of classic movies. When I was writing this movie and for lack of a better phrase, it began to go off the rails and I was mainly thinking I am going to give this story now a B-Movie treatment. I am going to start this movie and its going to feel like it could be in the world of a Lena Dunham or a Woody Allen movie, but I want it to devolve into something that has an anarchic and underground B- Movie feeling.
But the truth is those movies aren’t familiar to me. I only saw Pink Flamingos when I was in pre-production on the movie. The script was already written and was about to go and I was like, “Okay great! John Waters is a reference!” It was a reference that came later than you would expect.
Casting for this couldn’t have been easy given what your actors had to endure. How did you find the leads?
Do you know that the lead is my sister?
No I did not.
Much has been made of that fact. In the original draft of the script, the main relationship was not between siblings, but a feud between ex-lovers. The best friend I wrote to be played by my best friend Aaron Mark, a playwright, he is nothing like the way Jack Dunphy who played Aaron Mark in the movie is; Jack plays it brilliantly. But Aaron and my sister and I would do readings of the screenplay in this strange room in the basement of my parents’ building, and we used Betsy because she was the only actor we had on hand.
Aaron always said we should find a way to cast Betsy in this role and I was like I can’t do that because we can’t play ex-lovers, that’s disgusting. But as time wore on I actually realized that it would be more interesting if it were a sibling relationship and sibling rivalry. Doing so, Betsy and I could utilize some of the real issues that we did have growing up where our relationship was nonexistent and I didn’t pay attention to her and it was only later in our more adult years that we found a deep and really great friendship.
Its interesting to note that because one of the things people find most shocking about this movie, that a brother directed his sister in this role, and it’s become one of the main points of sick fascination. But it wasn’t the original intention, but it’s very cool and (a) somewhat alarming unintended byproduct of the writing process.
So that was your parents then in the film – what did they think?
They were very upset when they first read the script and they thought something was deeply wrong with me, and maybe something is deeply wrong with me. I don’t know.
They actually read the script and said nothing to me; I think they were hoping they would never have to talk about it and it would just be a project that would never get made or sort of dissolve into the ether. When I actually was preparing to make it I was able to bring them on board when I was able to describe the movie as a comedy and the overall intended effect was comedic.
I think in reading the script it read more graphic than it is. The movie is graphic sure, but somehow just reading some of those action descriptions, the imagination perhaps conjures something worse. But they’re very supportive of me obviously and my sister, and my father was an independent filmmaker for a decade.
What was the deal with the bizarre 9/11 artwork in your room in the film? That always seems like a point of discussion. Where the hell did that stuff come from?
That was made for the film. A really talented artist who I love named Nick Fagan made that work, and he did not make 9/11 work – I commissioned it. The reason is I grew up in New York City and I was in 9th grade when 9/11 happened. It was (a) very scary, heartbreaking, like formative moment in my youth, and as a result of that the motif of the Twin Towers is something I am fascinated by. It just holds a lot of power for me and I thought it would be interesting to have this character that I played, Adam, make art based on 9/11 and maybe that he was a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.
I thought it would be an evocative detail. It’s tragic iconography that will always be with this country and with me personally, and I thought it would be interesting to include. It does affect people.
When I watched the film I was reminded of John Waters in that in some of the crowd scenes, it looks like those around our protagonists aren’t in on the joke. Did you get in any trouble shooting those scenes?
I always have trouble answering this question, because I like keeping some of the secrets from the audience. But we didn’t get in trouble. Maybe we will get in trouble. At that point in the film we were all very under the spell of making the movie and that’s really all I can say.
That statement is very reminiscent of Alejandro Jodorowsky in how he would make these films where everyone would live together and develop this cult like mentality that would allow them to do almost anything on camera.
It’s a great honor for me to mention his name because he’s probably my favorite filmmaker. Yeah, ideally that’s what I hoped to have happen in the production, and we were lucky that this happened for us. There is like a cohesion that happens between cast and crew where everyone becomes a character in the movie, (so) that there really isn’t a separation. As an actor I’ve seen this happen in a lot of movies, and I’ve also seen it fail to happen, but when it happens it’s a very beautiful thing. What comes of it can be really intense and maybe also risky and maybe also boundary pushing. I like to think those things are valuable and vital.
Finally, what has your reaction to some of the reviews been, since the film is very divisive?
That’s a good question. One thing that I’ve said and I’ll say it here again to you is — and I always feel like I am saying a line or being cute when I say this — but I did see the film as being seen as this much of a provocation; which sounds strange after the fact, especially with the writing that has come out about the movie.
But we exist in a space we are really lucky to be in, in terms of the way critics are interacting with it. It seems to be a love it or hate it movie, which I get that and am very honored by, ‘cause it seems like a cardinal sin of making anything would be to make something that doesn’t inspire a strong reaction.