Horse Girl, the latest film by writer/director Jeff Baena which recently screened at Sundance, hits Netflix today. It’s the story of Sarah (Allison Brie), the titular “quirky” horse girl, who is sort of your stereotypical wallflower. She works in a craft store, loves horses, and spends the majority of her time making friendship bracelets while watching her favorite urban fantasy show. We come into Sarah’s life shortly after the death of her mother and discover her family, especially the women, has a long history of mental illness. It’s around this time a surreal series of dreams involving alien abduction begins to overtake Sarah’s psyche, as her life slowly unravels in a paranoia fueled series of events.
After watching Horse Girl, I had more than a few questions for director/co-writer Jeff Baena, who was kind enough to chat with me earlier this week. Jeff got his break working under David O. Russell collaborating on the script for I Heart Huckabees, then eventually transitioning to directing with his first feature film, the genuinely touching look at adolescent love in the zombie apocalypse, Life After Beth (2014). Since then he has continued to craft films that are as emotionally complex as they are quirky, and Horse Girl is no exception. The film has him reteaming with Brie, who previously starred in his film The Little Hours, who is also sharing a co-writing credit on the film. Here we dig into not only what it was like for the indie director working with Netflix, but some of the themes and deeper mysteries at the core of Horse Girl, including Jeff’s own UFO experiences.
Without spoiling too much here, I can say Jeff was kind enough to drop a few breadcrumbs for fans to follow when giving the film another viewing.
So first off, was Horse Girl always a Netflix film? If not, what was the trajectory that brought your film there?
Originally it was an idea Alison and I came up with, and then when it came time to find the right producer, we met with some people. I’ve known Mark Duplass for like, I don’t know, maybe 18 years now. I was always wanting to work with him, and he was very familiar with working the way I work and seemed like an incredible partner, which ended up being true. He had a four four-picture deal with Netflix, the first of which was Paddleton. Once I brought it to him, he first went to Netflix and they liked the idea, so they went ahead and made it.
What’s the big difference for you as a filmmaker making something like Life After Beth and you don’t exactly know where the film is going to essentially land, and then going to something like a Netflix where you’ve got this infrastructure already in place to sort of ingest the film in and distribute to millions of homes as soon as you’re done?
There really wasn’t much difference in terms of my creative approach. I think I was a little worried that there would be some interference, or like it would be as if you’re working with a studio and you would have to do a lot of compromises. But everyone at Netflix was so supportive and cool about the process. Everything they did only helped. So, if anything, it gave us a little bit more support than I’m used to.
The only thing I could think of being different, obviously the experience at Sundance is different because you’re not stressing out about having to sell it. But the one main difference, which I think is actually kind of cool, is we had a trailer going into Sundance, versus, you know, showing your movie at Sundance and then in July releasing a trailer. So, that was pretty much the main difference, that and just how supportive and I think generous Netflix was throughout the whole process.
Alison Brie is listed as a co-writer, and she’s stated that much of the film was improvised and was based on her medical history. With that in mind, what was the writing process like and how did that shape your relationship as a director and actor on the set? Brie is fearless here, and it has to be her best role to date; it couldn’t have been easy to get to some of those places she goes to.
Yeah, I think, when you say improvise, it’s sort of a catch all term and I think it doesn’t fully capture the way that I work and how Alison and I worked together. What we end up writing is extremely detailed, the only thing that isn’t spelled out explicitly is the dialogue, but it’s generally explained. So, the overall beats are beated out for all the actors so they know what they’re supposed to say. It’s just the actual dialogue itself isn’t explicitly given to them. That’s more a creative choice on my part because I find that by allowing the actors to do that, to speak the lines as they would say it, it comes across more naturally and also there’s more unexpected things that come up, which create sort of a presence on the part of the actors where they’re listening more so than waiting for their turn to sort of say what they’re going to say.
But given that, having written it with Alison, and knowing the motivations for all the characters, especially her character and knowing where everything is going, it was invaluable to have her on the other side of the camera. Because generally I’m trying to get performers to a place where they have that confidence and that understanding of the character, and it began with that. So, the places that I was able to go with Alison’s performance were incredibly richer and I think more rewarding because our jumping off point was so advanced to begin with. You know, she’s such an incredible actress, and as we were writing it, you know, we knew what those scenes were capable of. But the realization of them exceeded my expectations.
Horse Girl has a big alien abduction component. So what kind of research went into the script and do you personally believe in UFOs?
Yeah, we did a lot of research. I’ve seen UFOs, so I do believe in them. I mean I don’t know if they’re extraterrestrials or if they were just unannounced black projects by the Air Force or something. But I’ve had three different experiences where I’ve seen UFOs and I had a really vivid dream about being abducted one time that was very linear and not dreamlike at all.
Wow.
So that definitely informs the story to some extent.
I know there are a bunch of types of aliens people see in these abduction experiences; which kinds of aliens did you see?
They’re humanoid and they were called the Culvers. It’s such a small detail, but Jay Duplass, his character Ethan, the social worker — if you notice the hospital she’s in, there’s a jacket in the back of his chair that says Culver Hospital, just as a nod to that.
But yeah, I mean it was like I was just walking down the street and these aliens basically took me and put me on the spaceship that looked almost like a Winnebago. They took me to their planet with some other people from Earth and they sat us down and explained to us that they just randomly took us, and their culture has been around for almost as long as ours, but instead of focusing on arts and literature and music, they’ve been focusing on technology. So they are able to travel through hyperspace and they basically gave us a proposition that if we decided to stay with them and sort of teach them these other things that they haven’t really had time to investigate, even though they know we’re not experts, that we would go down as like their DaVinci or their Shakespeare or you know.
But we would never be able to go home and no one would ever know what happened to us, or we could just go home and then I woke up. Then there’s like some of the imagery dealing with the alien stuff that I took from my dream, like the stuff at the ramp. It felt very real.
One thing you briefly touch on in the film, that I think is one of those more fascinating aspects of the alien abduction scenario, is the loss of time and how you kind of morph that into a time travel tangent in the film.
My Bar Mitzvah’s theme was time travel. So, every table was like a different time, and I’ve always just been fascinated by that stuff.
I think we’re the same age, and while everyone’s kind of rediscovering the Satanic Panic of the eighties, they’ve yet to dive into the alien abduction phenomenon of the ‘90s. On that note, what is your favorite ‘90s alien abduction film? They had some great ones like Communion or Fire in the Sky.
Specifically, nineties alien abduction?
You know what film I loved when I was a kid that is not in this sort of in that ballpark is, do you remember the movie Explorers?
Yeah, I remember the VHS cover for that one.
Yeah Ethan Hawke and I think River Phoenix was in it. That movie was really cool. [Editor’s note: Explorers was the feature film debut for both Hawke and Phoenix. Show it to your kids if you haven’t already.]
I mean Communion was really intense, because I think ostensibly it was based on a true story. I don’t know how true Strieber’s stories were, but there was an air of authenticity to them and just sort of how matter of fact they were. I remember that really had an effect on me ‘cause there was an eeriness to it. There’s almost like a quiet through it because it wasn’t trying to sensationalize, it was trying to just depict it naturally and so that was scarier to me. It’s almost like when you watch Manhunter, that’s scarier to me than Silence of the Lambs because Brian Cox was just playing it so natural. The room is white. It’s not like you’re in a dungeon, you’re just in just a white clinical space. So everything that’s happening just feels scarier, because it’s more grounded and real.
Well it’s definitely something you tackle here in Horse Girl, because the one thing I love about this film is interspersed in these more surreal moments and elements is this very grounded story of this woman who’s struggling with mental illness. Working with these comedic heavyweights, was it a struggle at all for you as a director to respect this heavy subject matter, and treat it with the respect it deserves, but still have these bits of quirkiness in there?
Yeah. I just feel like if you’re only dealing with the dramatic aspects of any situation, you’re underselling it and not allowing it to really exist, because it’s bracketed and compartmentalized as opposed to immersed in reality. Yes, there were a lot of comedic actors that were in this movie, but I don’t want to sell them short and say that their only experience in life is comedic. Like they’re human beings, so you know they’ve had just as many experiences as a dramatic actors, but they just have, I think, a bigger sort of bag of experiences and skillsets to pull from in order to communicate things. I’ve always said with this movie that I think the stakes become higher the more real it feels, and I think it’s diminishing the reality by not allowing there to be any sort of humor in it whatsoever.
It sort of feels as if the deck is stacked against you and it’s forced into melodrama. Melodramas personally don’t resonate with me. I feel like it’s a lot, and the movies for me that are the most heartbreaking are the ones that show you a full spectrum of emotion and feeling. I think by sort of incorporating humor into it, it’s really allowing things to feel more balanced, and when things are sadder, I think it’s enhanced by that. When things are funnier, that’s enhanced by the sadness, so that those things play off of each other and I think it creates a fuller experience.
That’s so true. So as a director, what draws you to these stories about unconventional protagonists who are often more human than the people surrounding them?
I don’t know what draws me to them. I just know I am drawn to them.
I know there’s like certain themes that are popping up, you know, especially after doing these interviews, hearing people sort of break it down. But, you know, there’s definitely grief, loss, and the difficulty of love that I feel like I’m for some reason drawn to, but I don’t know exactly why. I mean, obviously it’s part of my psychology, but I think those stories resonate with me and I’m always trying something a little different or finding my way in on something, where maybe I’ve been dissatisfied with the way things have been handling the task for various reasons. I feel like I want to honor it by doing something a little bit different, having the audience engage in a different way and think about it in a different way instead of just sort of sleepwalking through some narrative that they’ve seen 15,000 times.
So finally, I love how the film has this surreal quality that is sort of open to interpretation. A lot like Donnie Darko — if I’m a pessimist, I can see one thing, while if I’m an optimist, I could see another. Which camp would you be in, and have you laid the groundwork to sway folks one way or the other, that you’d want to admit?
Yeah, absolutely. I have a definite take on what’s happening. I don’t want to explain it because I feel like that would do a disservice to the movie itself. But Alison and I thought really long and hard about this, [and] I think all the breadcrumbs are there. If you decide to do multiple viewings on this, I think it would be rewarding. I also do think there’s enough plausible deniability on multiple fronts to, if you want to go down one way, I think there’s enough information there to support it. But there is a definite take that I have, that I was working off of making this, with enough misdirection to support other ideas. But the main idea of what’s happening was always there and it was always in the foreground for me.
It’s almost life imitating art because I’ve been reading some conspiracy theories online about Horse Girl after watching it and what people think is going on. I found everything from actual clones, to time loops or everything just happened in her head. It’s fascinating, and I love films that are rich like that, that you can pull that out of people. With this film, I’ve been revisiting it over and over and over in my head, trying to figure out like what my take is on it and then talking with other people who’ve seen it to see how they unpacked the ending in their own way. I love films like that.
Me too. I think it’s easy to dismiss it and you know, just say, “It’s like just a bunch of random nonsense.” It’s really something that we spent time trying to devise, and I think it’s there for you if you want it. If you wanted to sort of experience it on a surface level, it’s there for you. If you want to sort of just understand it intuitively and emotionally, I think it’s there for you.
But you know, like watching the new season of Twin Peaks: The Return, and just watching people twist their minds around trying to come up with an explanation…to meet that level of engagement is the dream. You have to look at the text and try to figure out exactly what the intention is or even what it means to you and to double down on that. That to me is like the dream of this movie, and I know people don’t have time for it. I know it’s easy to dismiss it and just be like, you know, that wasn’t for me, it was confusing, but you know, whatever confusion you’re feeling is intentional. But there also is in my opinion and Alison’s opinion, an actual story there that does connect and works out.
This interview has been edited for clarity.