{"id":15563,"date":"2022-06-08T00:59:52","date_gmt":"2022-06-08T00:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parisinstitute.org\/?p=15563"},"modified":"2022-06-08T08:39:26","modified_gmt":"2022-06-08T08:39:26","slug":"depictions-article-the-world-stops-when-you-find-yourself-engrossed-in-another-persons-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parisinstitute.org\/depictions-article-the-world-stops-when-you-find-yourself-engrossed-in-another-persons-story\/","title":{"rendered":"The World Stops When You Find Yourself Engrossed in Another Person\u2019s Story"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Image: Stephanie Hayes in Slow Machine<\/em><\/h4>

Yonca Talu<\/h3>

The World Stops When You Find Yourself Engrossed in Another Person\u2019s Story<\/strong><\/h1>

Interview with Paul Felten and Joe DeNardo<\/span><\/h4>

EVER <\/strong><\/span>since Paul Felten and Joe DeNardo\u2019s debut feature Slow Machine<\/em> premiered at the 2020 Rotterdam Film Festival, its various literary and cinematic references have been on critics\u2019 lips. Written by Felten, then shot on 16mm and edited by DeNardo, the film pays particular tribute to late French auteur Jacques Rivette through its paranoid account of an adrenaline-seeking actress\u2019 involvement with a mysterious NYPD intelligence agent. Achieving a rare formal sophistication despite its minimal budget, Slow Machine <\/em>takes up some of Rivette\u2019s favorite motifs\u2014including the theater, conspiracies, and alternate realities\u2014to offer a riveting examination of contemporary urban angst. Months after interviewing<\/a> lead actress Stephanie Hayes for Metrograph\u2019s Journal, I had a virtual sit-down with New York-based co-directors Felten and DeNardo to parse out Rivette\u2019s influence on Slow Machine<\/em>.<\/p>

Yonca Talu: You\u2019ve described Jacques Rivette as Slow Machine<\/em>\u2019s \u2018\u2018inspirational godfather.\u2019\u2019 How did you first encounter his films?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

Paul Felten: <\/strong>My memory is that we saw C\u00e9line and Julie Go Boating <\/em>[1974] together at the Alliance Fran\u00e7aise [New York\u2019s French Institute] in 2003. They were doing a Rivette retrospective with prints, so we went to see as many of his films as we could. I think it\u2019s really important to watch them in the theater.<\/p>

Joe DeNardo: <\/strong>Our friendship goes back to college and was forged by moviegoing. We saw a lot of films together for the first time, including Rivette\u2019s. C<\/em>\u00e9line and Julie Go Boating<\/em> was a particularly refreshing viewing. I remember coming out of the theater elated, and being like, \u2018\u2018Oh my God, what have we just seen?\u2019\u2019 It was so special\u2014unlike anything we\u2019d ever watched before.<\/p>

\"\"Dominique Labourier and Juliet Berto in C\u00e9line and Julie Go Boating<\/em> (Les Films du Losange)<\/h4>

YT: Your reverence for <\/strong>C<\/em><\/strong>\u00e9line and Julie Go Boating <\/em><\/strong>is definitely palpable in Slow Machine<\/em>. In fact, your protagonist, Stephanie, has a lot in common with Rivette\u2019s titular heroines, including an addiction to fiction that prompts her to make up stories and take on different personas. How consciously did you draw from C\u00e9line and Julie while creating Stephanie?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

PF: <\/strong>What I find most exciting about C\u00e9line and Julie is their mercuriality. That was somehow the first word that came to my mind when I was thinking about Stephanie. I wanted her to be capable of doing anything at any moment. That\u2019s why I wrote the screenplay as a kind of improvised collage, without outlining it, and we started shooting before the final draft was even finished.<\/p>

\"\"<\/p>

Barbet Schroeder, Juliet Berto, and Dominique Labourier in C\u00e9line and Julie Go Boating<\/em> (Les Films du Losange)<\/h4>

YT: That sounds similar to Rivette\u2019s own process of writing some of his films as they were being shot.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

PF:<\/strong> Yeah. That spontaneous energy is so lacking from cinema today. Everything feels overmanaged and televisually bland.<\/p>

YT: How did your interest in Rivette evolve over time? Did you also familiarize yourselves with his filmmaking methods?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

PF: <\/strong>Rivette\u2019s films weren\u2019t widely distributed in America, and not much has been published about him in English, except for an out-of-print monograph by Jonathan Rosenbaum and two other short monographs. The best record of his practice is probably Claire Denis\u2019 [1990] documentary, Jacques Rivette: The Night Watchman <\/em>[which features Rivette in conversation with critic Serge Daney]. Although from what I can tell, he wasn\u2019t so comfortable talking about his process.<\/p>

JD: <\/strong>There was an interview where he mentioned his inability to follow up a film with another one right away\u2014which I really appreciated. He was like, \u2018\u2018I did it, and now I\u2019m just gonna sit for a while,\u2019\u2019 as opposed to the ambition that American filmmakers have of \u2018\u2018Let\u2019s keep making more, more, more!\u2019\u2019 [Laughter<\/em>]<\/p>

YT: Another Rivette film that Slow Machine <\/em>seems to have a kinship with is The Gang of Four <\/em>[1989]. Like Beno\u00ee<\/strong>t R<\/strong>\u00e9<\/strong>gent<\/strong>\u2019s character in that movie, your antagonist, Gerard, works\u2014or pretends to work\u2014in law enforcement, and displays a combination of whimsy, menace, and erudition that constantly throws into question our assumptions about who he really is.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

PF: <\/strong>The<\/em> Gang of Four<\/em> was one of the first Rivette films we saw, so it\u2019s funny that you mentioned it. I think about it sometimes, but it wasn\u2019t an active, conscious influence on Slow Machine<\/em>.<\/p>

I imagined Gerard as a sort of bonkers version of a sad John le Carr\u00e9 spy. I\u2019d been reading le Carr\u00e9 novels and thinking about how he could get away with being confusing\u2014borderline incoherent for long stretches of time. He was also somebody who didn\u2019t outline at all and wrote in a collage-like fashion\u2014he edited, and edited, and edited. So his process was pretty experimental.<\/p>

Another inspiration for Gerard came from Rivette\u2019s Out 1 <\/em>[1971]. I wanted him to move with the same freedom as a character from that film, particularly the theater director played by Michael Lonsdale. I\u2019ve always liked that Out 1<\/em>\u2019s characters are oddball creatives at the same time that they have this official work to do [in reference to the film\u2019s plot about a secret society].<\/p>

\"\"<\/p>

Michael Lonsdale and Bernadette Lafont in\u00a0Out 1<\/em><\/h4>

YT: What also makes Gerard akin to a Rivette character is the sense that he might be a figment of Stephanie\u2019s imagination or a personification of her unconscious. Is that something that was on your mind when you were writing the script?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

PF: <\/strong>Absolutely. There was always going to be an impish, elfin quality about Gerard. \u2018\u2018Are you for real?\u2019\u2019 is something Stephanie even asks him at one point. But I made him real for myself, for the purposes of my own sanity. I thought, \u2018\u2018This person exists in the world, and may or may not be lying about who he is.\u2019\u2019<\/p>

\"\"<\/p>

Stephanie Hayes and Scott Shepherd in\u00a0Slow Machine<\/em><\/h4>

YT: How much did you discuss the character with <\/strong>actor<\/strong> Scott Shepherd, who perfectly embodies Gerard\u2019<\/strong>s ambivalence?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

PF: <\/strong>Scott came in knowing what to do. Directing him was mainly about calibrating the rhythm of his speech. He and Stephanie spoke a private language. They had their own conspiratorial collaboration that was separate from whatever we were all doing in the room, which was very helpful.<\/p>

JD: <\/strong>Yeah, it was a huge boon for the film that they knew of each other\u2019s work and had wanted to collaborate for some time.<\/p>

\"\"<\/p>

Scott Shepherd and Stephanie Hayes in\u00a0Slow Machine<\/em><\/h4>

YT: Did you show your actors any of Rivette\u2019<\/strong>s films?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

PF: <\/strong>No, because most of them weren\u2019t available in the U.S. yet. C<\/em>\u00e9line and Julie Go Boating <\/em>has only recently become something you can easily get here\u2014it\u2019s now streaming on Criterion Channel. The movie that we actually made our actors sit down and watch was Godard\u2019s Every Man for Himself <\/em>[1980], which had just come out on DVD.<\/p>

JD: <\/strong>There\u2019s a visual naturalism in that film, as in Rivette\u2019s work, that we wanted to give them a sense of.<\/p>

YT: Slow Machine<\/em>\u2019s fragmented narrative, which intercuts between different storylines featuring Stephanie, also brings to mind Alain <\/strong>Resnais\u2019 modernist explorations of memory.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

PF: <\/strong>When I was writing Slow Machine<\/em>, I thought of it as a memory piece, and we did talk about Resnais\u2019 movies, especially Muriel <\/em>[1963] and Je t<\/em>\u2019<\/em>aime, je t<\/em>\u2019aime<\/em> [1968].<\/p>

JD:<\/strong> Je t<\/em>\u2019<\/em>aime, je t<\/em>\u2019aime <\/em>is another favorite of ours that played at the Alliance Fran\u00e7aise, and was definitely a big editing influence on Slow Machine<\/em>.<\/p>

YT: How much of the film\u2019s structure was devised in the editing room?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

JD:<\/strong> Our friend Ian Olds, who is also a filmmaker, did the first run of the edit as the screenplay flowed. But it just didn\u2019t work\u2014it seemed confusing and awkward. So we started rearranging the scenes until we could find patterns that would intrigue you as a viewer, and the film would play out in a structural way that made sense. The guiding thread was how memory works\u2014how our brains piece together events from the past, half true, half false.<\/p>

PF: <\/strong>There were some more traditional scenes that established Stephanie\u2019s character and gave insight into her, which we cut out. That made the movie more coherent in its own particular way.<\/p>

JD: <\/strong>I was worried about losing the audience\u2019s interest, though. I remember saying, \u2018\u2018Let\u2019s make some sense here around the 30-minute mark.\u2019\u2019 [Laughs<\/em>] I spoke last night with Milton [Carter, who plays a supporting role in Slow Machine<\/em>]. He\u2019s just recently seen the film, and even he<\/em> was like, \u2018\u2018I don\u2019t know what the hell is going on.\u2019\u2019 I said, \u2018\u2018You know, the guy hits his head,\u2019\u2019 and he was like, \u2018\u2018What guy?\u2019\u2019 I said, \u2018\u2018You gotta watch it again.\u2019\u2019 [Laughter<\/em>]<\/p>

YT: Tonally and thematically, Slow Machine <\/em>feels like a cross between Rivette\u2019s and David Lynch\u2019s films, which share many similarities and have drawn comparisons to each other. In 2015, New York\u2019s Film Society of Lincoln Center even organized a dual retrospective of the directors\u2019 work. Is Lynch important to you?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

JD: <\/strong>I appreciate Lynch and think he\u2019s awesome as an American director out there. But I\u2019m not a big fan of his work, except for the original two seasons of Twin Peaks <\/em>[1990-91].<\/p>

PF: <\/strong>Joe and I never talked about Lynch in relation to Slow Machine<\/em>, but his work was very formative for me, as for many people from our generation. I\u2019m most interested in the ways in which he plays with doubles and shifting identities in movies like Mulholland Drive <\/em>[2001] and Inland Empire <\/em>[2006], which I think are his two best.<\/p>

What I also find to be a virtue of his films, and that ours hopefully has too, is the sense of a private activity\u2014like a secret, collaborative understanding among the cast and crew that the audience doesn\u2019t entirely have access to. However Lynch works with his actors, whatever vibe he gets them on, is fascinating to me.<\/p>

YT: There\u2019<\/strong>s a scene in <\/strong>Slow Machine <\/em><\/strong><\/span>in which Chlo\u00eb Sevigny, who plays herself, recounts to Stephanie a surreal audition she did for anonymous scarved people in a secluded warehouse. Where did the idea for that sequence come from?\u00a0<\/span> <\/strong><\/p>

PF: <\/strong>It came from a potentially apocryphal story I\u2019d heard about Catherine Breillat\u2019s directing style, which involved her wearing a scarf over her face so that the actors wouldn\u2019t see her facial expressions. I have no idea if this really happened, but it just felt so aggressive and menacing to me, and stuck with me as an image. In fact, one of the first films I made in graduate school was about a woman who goes to an audition where she has to perform in front of scarved figures.<\/p>

For me, auditions are such a weird notion\u2014people sit behind a table and judgmentally watch a line of performers do a song and dance. It\u2019s always been a very uncomfortable process to be involved in as a filmmaker. So I wanted to explore that in Slow Machine<\/em>, and have it take on some metaphysical qualities that weren\u2019t only about how crappy auditions are.<\/p>

\"\"<\/p>

Stephanie Hayes, Chlo\u00eb Sevigny, and Jes Sweat in\u00a0Slow Machine<\/em><\/h4>

YT: <\/strong>Chlo<\/strong><\/span>\u00eb\u2019s story also evokes C\u00e9line and Julie\u2019s trancelike visits to the haunted house in Rivette\u2019s film, where they become spectators of, and later actors in, a period family drama.<\/span> <\/strong><\/p>

PF: <\/strong>Absolutely. I\u2019ve always been interested in stories within stories, and the way the world stops when you suddenly find yourself engrossed in another person\u2019s story is something that does feel trancelike to me.<\/p>

JD: <\/strong>Trance or the world stopping is your ultimate hope when you go to the movies. The world stops, you\u2019re in this black box with other people\u2014it\u2019s a communal experience.<\/p>

YT: <\/strong>Are the group scenes in <\/strong>Slow Machine<\/em><\/strong>, in which Stephanie hangs out with musician Eleanor Friedberger and her bandmates, indebted to <\/strong>Out 1<\/em><\/strong><\/span>\u2019s portrayal of the theater troupes?<\/span> <\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>

PF:<\/strong> Definitely. I love Out 1<\/em>\u2019s durational theater exercises and wish there were more scenes like that in Slow Machine<\/em>\u2014more real-time documentation of a performance. But we just couldn\u2019t afford to keep the camera rolling for too long [due to the expense of film stock].<\/p>

I liked the idea that Slow Machine<\/em>\u2019s characters, like Rivette\u2019s, would have a shared cultural baseline. It\u2019s not like they all went to Bennington College together or something, but they belong to the same milieu in New York.<\/p>

There\u2019s also a performative way in which characters wield their intelligence at each other in Out 1<\/em>, as well as in a film like Le Pont du Nord <\/em>[1981], that I wanted to be a quality of Slow Machine<\/em>.<\/p>

\"\"<\/p>

Bulle and Pascale Ogier in\u00a0Le Pont du Nord<\/em>\u00a0(Les Films du Losange)<\/h4>

YT: Rivette intended <\/strong>Le Pont du Nord <\/em><\/strong>as a portrait of his era\u2014an era of paranoia and suspicion, but also one in which Paris was being radically altered by urban renewal. It seems to me that Slow Machine <\/em>is imbued with a similar desire to capture New York\u2019s changing face in the wake of 9\/11.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

PF: <\/strong>Slow Machine <\/em>reflects anxieties that both Joe and I feel about what\u2019s happening in the city, and the ways in which the creative work we love is getting professionalized out of existence. It also turned out to be a pretty good COVID movie. It evokes a claustrophobia that I don\u2019t think any of us imagined we were going to experience like we did during lockdown.<\/p>

JD:<\/strong> People respond to the fact that there\u2019s no picturesque New York in Slow Machine<\/em>. They\u2019re like, \u2018\u2018Where the hell is the safe house [where Gerard is based]?\u2019\u2019 There\u2019s a sense<\/em> of New York, but nearly the whole film takes place indoors. In that respect, it\u2019s the reverse of Le Pont du Nord <\/em>[which was shot almost entirely outdoors in Paris].<\/p>

Paul wrote the screenplay from an Obama-era, soft-power kind of zone. But things changed so much in the U.S. while we were editing the film. So we hoped that it would achieve an overarching, above-the-fray quality, and it seems to have worked out that way with the audience. No one\u2019s said, \u2018\u2018This is 2014.\u2019\u2019<\/p>

\"\"<\/p>

Pascale Ogier in\u00a0Le Pont du Nord<\/em> (Les Films du Losange)<\/h4>

YT: There\u2019s definitely a timelessness to the film\u2019s anxious atmosphere, such as when Gerard alludes to a terrorist attack he claims to have protected Stephanie from as \u2018\u2018a deliberately paced collective perishing.\u2019\u2019 That reminded me of a line Pascale Ogier\u2019s character says in Le Pont du Nord<\/em><\/strong>: <\/strong>\u2018\u2018Real life is a reign of terror.\u2019\u2019<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

JD: <\/strong>That\u2019s certainly a Rivette vibe that we take\u2014the playful conspiracy. The danger never manifests itself in a palpable way that you have any real orientation to. It\u2019s just there, and everyone sort of dances around it.<\/p>

PF: <\/strong>In a way, the conspiracy feels less physically threatening than it does psychologically. Such as it is, the conspiracy perpetuates itself. So worrying about it becomes its engine\u2014which is paranoia. I don\u2019t think we\u2019re concerned about whether someone\u2019s actually going to get blown up when we\u2019re watching Slow Machine <\/em>or Rivette\u2019s films. We\u2019re just like, \u2018\u2018Are they going to finish the play?\u2019\u2019 [in Out 1<\/em>.] The stakes are simultaneously very high and kind of casual.<\/p>

YONCA TALU<\/span> is a filmmaker and film critic living in Paris. She grew up in Istanbul and graduated from NYU Tisch and the \u00c9cole Normale Sup\u00e9rieure. She is a regular contributor to Film Comment<\/em> magazine and Metrograph Journal.<\/h4>

cyt249@nyu.edu<\/a><\/p>

dePICTions<\/em><\/a> volume 2 (2022): U.S. vs. \u2026 (Un-)American Crossings and Appropriations<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image: Stephanie Hayes in Slow Machine Yonca Talu The World Stops When You Find Yourself Engrossed in Another Person\u2019s Story Interview with Paul Felten and…<\/p>\n

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