ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

A24

Finding Your Voice: 1on1 with Bo Burnham (director, EIGHTH GRADE)

by 2 Comments

Written and directed by Bo Burnham, Eighth Grade follows the story of Kayla (portrayed brilliantly by Elsie Fisher), a pre-teen girl in the final week before her middle school graduation. Looking forward to high school in the fall, Kayla is caught between who she was and who she wants to be. As her school year comes to a close, she must attempt to find herself in the midst of adolescence without losing herself in the process. When asked why he chose to focus his story on the trials of an eighth grade girl, Burnham explains that there’s an innocence and awkwardness to that age that he wanted to explore.

“I’ve met a lot of high schoolers. [Today’s] high schoolers seem very blahzay and over it,” he begins. “They have a thousand yard stare that feels like they got from the war of junior high. You know what I mean? I think of coming of age in high school, but high school is when you’re becoming an adult. When you’re an eighth grade, you’re literally still a child. When you’re in high school, I don’t think you have ‘child’ left in you but, when you’re in 8th grade, you still have full blown child going on [within you].”

“I wanted to make a movie that I liked and I wanted to see. So, it definitely wasn’t for eighth graders,” he continues. “I hope that eighth graders like it, but it’s definitely not primarily for them or only for them. If I’m honest, I think people are just about as awkward and weird as eighth graders. I don’t think it’s that different. I think we’re all pretty awkward. I hope it serves kids and their parents in specific ways but I also hope anyone can see themselves in her, you know what I mean? It’s the sort of sexist thing that’s put on a lot of young female stories. No one goes, “Oh, Hamlet. Was that only for Princes of Denmark?” Everyone sees themselves in him, even if they aren’t a prince or a man or a Danish or whatever. I think a 13 year old girl can be the same thing. Everyone should be able to see themselves in her… I connect to her personally.”

With Kayla, Burnham has created a character who feels completely honest and authentic in her approach to the world around her. In order to bring that sense of genuineness to life onscreen, Burnham realized that he had to perfect Kayla’s voice, a process that took him online for research.

“The first step was [to create] the voice of [the film],” he remembers. “So, I was just listening to kids talk online about themselves. You know, kids that we’re talking with 10 views on their channel. The first thing I did in writing was to just transcribe exactly what they said. Every sound, you know what I mean? So, I was transcribing [things like] ‘Uh, yeah. So, uh, yeah, sorry, what I’m trying to say is…’ That’s what I was trying to write. I was watching these videos [thinking] if this were a performance, that would be incredible because the way kids actually sound is so much more complex than the way kids are written and performed. So then after transcribing a dozen or so, I started to write my own in that voice… The movie grew out of that voice, really. The voice, to me, contains the whole meaning of the movie. [It’s in] the performance and what she wants to be, how she thinks she might be, and what’s the gap between that? It’s all there in just a sentence.”

Once he’d established Kayla’s voice, Burnham’s next step was to establish the film’s tone. Looking back, he sought to emphasize the weight and importance of her challenges, rather than focus on broad comedy.

“I really did approach every scene the same in terms of just trying to reflect your subjective experience,” he explains. “I wasn’t in funny scenes trying to be funny. [For example, in] the banana scene, we weren’t laughing. I was taking that very seriously because I was trying to feel with her. This is an awful moment of your dad catching you in this really bad thing. Moments that don’t sound like a big deal of all different types, when you actually live them, are a huge deal. Go to a pool party. It’s nothing. But when you actually go to a pool party, it’s not nothing, at least initially.”

Also central to Eighth Grade is Kayla’s relationship with her father, an earnest man who loves his daughter yet struggles to connect with her in the midst of her issues. When asked why he chose to explore that tension between generations in this way, Burnham answers that this sort of miscommunication is simply reality.

“I just think that’s the truth and how it maybe even should it be,” he states. “It might be the point of it to not quite understand each other. What he kind of gives her at the end is, “I cannot understand you in this moment. I have no idea what you’re going through right now. But I understand like the meta-you better than you do.” That’s sort of what my mom gave me all the time, when I’d be going through [stuff]. I’d [say], ‘You don’t know what I’m going through at all right now.’ Then she’d say, ‘I don’t. But I saw you go through something at four and then eight and then 12. I know this feels like a really new thing you’re going through, but I’ve seen you feel this way before and you’ve gotten through it.’ [Parents] don’t specifically know you moment to moment, but they know the overarching you. At that age you just can’t attend to [that] because two years ago feels like forever ago and you were a different person.”

While one might wonder if he were overwhelmed at the prospect of stepping into the director’s chair for the first time, Burnham believes that he was able to play to his strengths by focusing on the youth themselves.

Says Burnham, “I wrote it with the intention [to direct]. I had written another script that I tried to get made and it didn’t happen and then  [thought I would] write something that I know I can direct… The intention was to lean into whatever strengths I thought I had, like scene work or working with young people. I may not be a director that really knows how to direct a film, but I know young people in the Internet pretty well, so if I can stay close to what I feel like I know then I can be in decent shape.”

However, despite his original vision, Burnham notes that the change in the political landscape also altered how he views the film.

“I was certain I was making it for Hillary’s America,” he expresses. “The movie just felt different when we were making it because then, all of a sudden, Trump is there and felt like, ‘Whoa.’ When she’s making that video to herself at the end , we were making [the film] saying [we] really don’t know if she’s going to make it. I don’t know if the country makes it to when she’s a senior, which was so different than when it was written. When it was written, it was going to be a subtle sweet interrogation of this thing. Now that there’s a female president, we all feel a little better about ourselves. Instead, the story became a lot more urgent when Trump was there which was insane.”

Of course, with any conversation about today’s youth comes an exploration of their relationship with the internet and social networking. A veteran of the YouTube world, Burnham wanted to explore the online world in a way that revealed how pre-teens engaged it, rather than his own generation.

“I wanted to talk about how [the internet] felt to me and I think I did,” he explains. “When I tried to write about someone my age dealing with the Internet, it just felt so embarrassing. It was just so hatable. But, when you’re an eighth grader, we can kind of like forgive our behavior a little bit better. We can look at it and [say that] she isn’t narcissistic. She isn’t self-obsessed. She’s just looking for connections. She’s just desperate to be loved, like we all are. I think that’s actually how we all are acting on the Internet. We’re just like pretending like it’s something else… The Internet means the most to those kids because they don’t know a world before it. So, it’s not this other thing to them that they’re living with. It’s the way that they live and always have.”

“[The internet] is there but it’s also theirs to change. That doesn’t mean they can’t react to it. I just think that older people in charge of in Silicon Valley need to more deeply understand this responsibility they have because of how important this thing is and how deep it reaches into them. It isn’t just like some cool marketing technique. It’s actually the neurochemistry of an entire generation that you have in your hand. The kids will learn that. It’s more the job that people with power [must realize]… They have like a lot of power and they need to wield that responsibly.”

Rather than use Eighth Grade to make some form of cultural argument, Burnham’s ultimate desire for the film is for people to realize that they are not alone in their fears and anxieties.

“I just hope people see it and feel something,” he claims. “I really don’t want the movie to be prescriptive or tell you what to think or wag a finger or be a ted talk. The hope with everything is always that you just feel a little less alone. I mean, that was the point for me to do it, just to [realize that] these feelings that I have that I think are so unique are not unique. They are shared by other people. A whole wide array of people can see it and see their own feelings reflected in someone that may have been like them or may have not been like them.”

 

Eighth Grade is in theatres now.

For full audio of our interview with Bo Burnham, click here.

The Broken Church: 1on1 with Cedric the Entertainer (FIRST REFORMED)

by Leave a Comment

First Reformed tells the story of Toller (Ethan Hawke), a former military veteran and pastor of the First Reformed Church.  Preparing to celebrate their 250th anniversary, the church has become largely ceremonial, with most parishioners having moved over to the local megachurch, led by charismatic Pastor Jeffers (Cedric the Entertainer). When tragedy strikes, Toller finds himself torn between counseling the victim’s grieving widow (Amanda Seyfried) and his own creeping personal issues. Although he’s most frequently viewed as a comedian, veteran actor Cedric the Entertainer handles the role of Pastor Jeffers with strength and humanity. When asked what interested him in this role, he insists that it was opportunity to explore his dramatic side and, more importantly, to work with legendary writer/director Paul Schrader that led him to the film.

“For me, it was the opportunity to work with such a legendary writer and director in Paul Schrader,” he starts. “[Also], when someone asks to cast me out of a comedy movie–and it’s not a comedy, you know, it’s a dramatic role–it’s always something because I have a theatrical background, even though I built my brand as this comedian. I love to get on the screen and find things and really dig into a character. So, this was a break to be able to work with Ethan Hawke and then with Paul as well. I didn’t have any scenes with Amanda, but she was there.”

In fact, what most excited Cedric about the chance to work with the legendary director was Schrader’s ability to find depth in the humanity of his characters.

“In this particular script, it is the kind of empathy that he’s able to find in the despair and discovery that people have as human beings,” he reflects. “Right when we’re the most confident, we’re also the most vulnerable. Right when we should be at our greatest, we can easily on the turn of a dime be at our lowest. There was something about this [film] where…  religion in this movie was the main backdrop–the spiritual life–yet he kind of pulled the layer back, even [in] Ethan Hawke’s character, who’s going through a lot. But my character [is] playing a pastor of a big megachurch, where we got thirty thousand followers, and church is being held at the old basketball theater. Why is that necessary for my spiritual existence, right?”

“And now to see [Toller and say], I believe in this guy, trust this guy and put my faith in him. Then I kind of pull back the layer and remind him that it’s a business. [My character]’s got corporate donors and he’s listening to them over what we want to do. That’s really real and that’s when you do question all of these things that we have to live within the world that are these kind of big tent poles of religion or politics, education and medicine. We kind of just follow along them, knowing that we’re kind of being guided by this big corporate idea of what it is and we tell you what you believe. That was an interesting thing to play.”

In Reformed, Cedric plays Pastor Jeffers, the jovial but burdened minister at the Abundant Life megachurch. In preparation for the role, Cedric went to speak with several well-known megachurch pastors in order to find out how they manage the balance between spiritual leader and corporate figurehead.

“I’m friends with Bishop TD Jakes, who has a huge church with a big following, and also great friends with another minister in St Louis, Freddy Clark. We would sit and just kind of talk about his world. What’s it like? It is this thing where you are the spiritual leader. You do have all these people that come to you from all walks of life because of family circumstances and look at you from the pulpit on Sunday morning as the person with all the answers, right? They assume you have every answer to their life and that, in that Bible or text that you’re going to say, you’re going to give them a bit of knowledge that’s going to solve it all for them… Yet, once you close the hymnals and you say, ‘Amen’, now [Jeffers has] to run this big building. I’ve got a staff. I’ve got land. I’ve got real estate taxes. I’ve got things that are just as important to me as your soul, because in order to have all of this, we had to raise a certain amount of money. We have to provide these programs. So, it was interesting to see someone have to do that and still be a human and at the end, and have frailties and faults… and things that, if everybody saw them, it would be like seeing the Wizard [of Oz]. Like, they’d say ‘Oh wow, you’re just a person.’”

By placing Toller and Jeffers up against one another, Schrader creates a fascinating tension between the two men and their opposing values. However, Cedric believes that much of their differences are a result of the communities around them.

“Toller needs to suffer. He takes it all on… He’s a minister in a kind of a church that doesn’t really have parishioners. It’s kind of a ceremonial kind of place. It’s been around 250 years. So, he spends a lot of time alone and even though he’s supposed to be a leader of people and one that helps, it’s in that loneliness that one finds that they can jump into the despair of their own existence and decide that they haven’t suffered enough. That’s the difference. I think that, because [Jeffers] is in a big organization, I’m constantly being protected or being driven to have to be something on a daily basis.” 

In one of the more interesting (and unexpected) aspects of the film, Schrader inserts a conversation regarding the environment and the responsibility of the church within the narrative that forces Jeffers to make some difficult decisions. Even so, Cedric feels that his character is torn between caring for Toller’s humanity and maintaining his church financially.

Says Cedric, “I think from the point of view of the megachurch, you try to look at things in a bigger picture and not so much in the micro. So, I think that, even when dealing with the character Ed Balq who was the big industrialist in the movie and he’s a big donor for me. [At one moment,] I have to kind of bark at Toller and I want to defend him. It was a thing that Paul didn’t necessarily want because he wanted that he needed Ed to challenge him. But if you listen very briefly, I tell him, ‘Ed…’ I just say his name, [as if to tell him to] bring it down. I felt like that’s the part that you don’t get about Jeffers is that [he] understands what [Ed does] for [him] but, as a human, [he] understands [Toller] too. So, he would accept your donation from this organization, so I can accept the fact that you’re going to maybe kill a few people but, with that sacrifice, I may have the opportunity to save thousands. That’s what Jefferies looks at.

While Toller and Jeffers’ relationship remains strained at times throughout the film, Cedric also believes that there is a genuine friendship between the two characters.

“Imagine being an administrator of one of these kind of big churches where you’re the head honcho and to have someone that you are passionate about as a human… and they make you have to deal with your humanity,” he reflects. “They raise a question that you haven’t had an answer in a long time. The fact that he would even challenge Ed Balq [shows that Toller] is a person that puts some energy back into you… That is a friendship that I need. Right? Because that’s a person that makes you ask a question when you don’t have to have questions. All you give away as answers (in your opinion) because you’re the king. And that is something that me and Ethan, in our couple of our rehearsal days, we discovered a relationship where we knew each other and that there was a real friendship there, even though I’m communicating like boss to subordinate. It’s this thing that we wanted to make sure that people felt like they actually could be better friends. They probably are friends.”

In light of his financial dealings, it would not be difficult to judge Jeffers for his actions. Nevertheless, Cedric still believes that his character is a good man, despite his compromises.

“I would say yes, to the degree that he is a man that’s trying to do good,” he begins. “In the process of that, do I have to do some bad things? Maybe. But, overall, Jeffers is trying to do good, even when he speaks to Toller and he’s trying to get him to understand that [he’s] always living in the garden. [He tells him that he’s] always where the despair is… When you do that, you make the choice sometimes to leave people behind. You make the choice that maybe you will have an extra glass of communion wine, but it doesn’t make you a bad guy. I found that with some of the guys I studied. We met at a cigar lounge and you go, ‘Well, do you smoke cigars? Is that right or wrong?’ Yeah, I’ll have a cigar. I have a glass of wine… I may even use language amongst certain friends, you know. But again, this is all in that part of being a human as opposed to literally try to live on the pedestal that people put you on.”

Despite the film’s controversial exploration of modern day religion, Cedric was still surprised at some of the backlash that he experienced during the film’s production.

“Early on, as we were scouting locations, we had to speak with several pastors and it was the question of the subject matter that made one of the bigger churches [nervous],” he remembers. “I was friends with them. I called them personally and they made this choice that was very Jeffers, I felt. They made a choice to say ‘No, you can’t shoot this movie here because we think that it may put a blemish on what we sell as a religious belief. We don’t want to sell that. And it was like this is not your church. We just need the location. But for them it felt like maybe people would see their lead minister as the same kind of guy. It [seemed like they didn’t] want to raise that question. They actually wanted script approval. It got crazy.”

For full audio of our conversation with Cedric the Entertainer, click here.

 First Reformed is in theaters now.

First Reformed: Is Church Relevant?

by Leave a Comment

“Will God forgive us?” — Toller (Ethan Hawke, First Reformed)

First Reformed tells the story of Toller (Ethan Hawke), a former military veteran and pastor of the First Reformed Church.  Preparing to celebrate their 250th anniversary, the church has become largely ceremonial, with most parishioners having moved over to the local megachurch, led by charismatic Pastor Jeffries (Cedric the Entertainer).  A former military veteran and father to a deceased child, Toller seeks desperately to ‘feel alive’ again in his ministry and finds himself called to the home of a suicidal parishioner for counselling.  When tragedy strikes, Toller finds himself torn between counseling the victim’s grieving widow (Amanda Seyfried) and his own creeping personal issues.

Written and directed by the legendary Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Afflicted), First Reformed reveals the hidden realities of church ministry, ugliness and all.  As Toller, Hawke offers a strong but subtle performance, portraying him as both warm and broken.  He is a man who is constantly ‘in the garden’ of suffering, emotionally and physically, clinging to a faith that seems irrelevant to the culture in which he lives.

However, in the death of his parishioner, he finds new life as he begins to question what it means to express his faith in the 21st Century.  By re-examining his passions and calling, Toller’s crisis of faith leads him into conflict with established religion, eventually putting him at odds with his friend, Pastor Jeffries.  Focused on massive budgets and state-of-the-art technology, Jeffries’ megachurch provides a fascinating contrast to Toller and First Reformed by showcasing the potential hypocrisy of the ‘ministry as big business’ mentality.  While Jeffries speaks of meeting with people of importance and spectacle, Toller demonstrates an increasingly deeper interest in justice issues such as the Underground Railroad and environmental conservation.  This juxtaposition of ideologies highlights the dangers of ‘cultural spirituality’ and begs the question of where the church’s responsibility lies today.  As the film goes on, Toller increasingly agonizes over important cultural issues, to the extent that he wonders if God will forgive us for our selfishness.

In light of this, First Reformed plays out as both call to the church and challenge to it as well.  Schrader’s script depicts the angst of one who clearly wishes the church will come alive by recognizing its potential role to affect change in our world.  As a result, First Reformed portrays the church as both hopeful and irrelevant by highlighting the lack of interest in social issues in favor of spiritual entertainment.  Broken by his personal history, Toller’s journey also reveals the impact that a person (or church) can have to affect change but also questions to what lengths they must go to do so.

For audio of our interview with writer/director Paul Schrader, listen below:

For audio of our interview with Cedric the Entertainer, listen below: