Now playing at the Coolidge CornerTheater is Beeswax, the third feature from Boston-based director Andrew Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation).
The film stars newcomers Tilly and Maggie Hatcher; twin sisters who essentially play themselves, as the story examines their special relationship. Jeannie (played by Tilly), introverted and confined to a wheel chair, co-owns a vintage clothing store in Austin, Texas. Lauren (played by Maggie), extroverted and eager to travel, plans to leave for Africa. And in the middle of this is their friend, Merrill, played by Alex Karpovsky. He's studying for the bar exam and glad to divert his attention to helping the sisters navigate a rough patch in their lives.
After a recent screening of Beeswax at the Cooldige, Bujalski discussed the making of the film with members of the audience.
Q: Is there a peculiar problem with people our age? Or is there just a peculiar problem with these characters? Are you trying to show society as rotten to the core?
ANDREW BUJALSKI: No. [He laughs] I think everybody just hast their own peculiar dysfunction. My peculiar dysfunction are probably not exactly the same as yours, although I'm sure there's a little overlap. I never set out to do that with any of my films. It's interesting in that so much of what's written about these films, for better and or worse, is cultural criticism. Leave the context of whatever movement in Cinema this movie may or may not be apart of aside, I've never set out to make a sociological statement.
Q: It's always about individuals, wouldn't you say?
BUJALSKI: Yes, it's always about individuals. It's very low to the ground in my mind. When I sit down to work on movies, I'm trying to think about characters as specifically as I can, and situations as specifically as I can. I try to follow through with making the film that way. I've never, ever sat down and thought, What's the statement that needs to be made about a generation? I feel like that's a critics job, and it's not my job. I haven't set approached my job as an artist through the eyes of a critic.
Q: How did you find the sisters?
BUJALSKI: I went to college with Maggie, and she actually acted in a short film that I did when I was a student. Maggie plays Lauren. And I found her to be a mentally charismatic person. Pretty soon after I met her and we did that short film, I met her sister Tilly. I found her also to be a mentally charismatic person. I'm not a twin, and I think I think like anybody who's not a twin in that they're fascinated by people who are twins. So it was an idea that was stuck in the back of my head for the better part of a decade. I wanted to try to find out what was magical about them and get it on screen. Of course, this is the third feature film that I've done where I pulled the same trick ever time: writing for the lead; in this case, the twins. And I learned a lot about them. I, like a lot of people, have a lot of preconceptions about what it means to be a twin, and they mostly proved to be correct. You learn time and again that their relationship is more deeper than you could ever really know.
Q: Was this one hundred percent scripted?
BUJALSKI: Yes, in as much as I wrote a full-length script. I wrote a rough draft of it and I tried to make it as perfect as I could. If you were holding the script in your lap while you were watching the movie, certainly you would find moments where - and this is true of any movie ever made - things will end up a little different by the time they make the trip to the screening. So, not every word that they say is directly from the script, but you would easily be able to follow along. Every scene follows a written structure, for sure. But I've always tried to leave room for invention for the the actors to find their own way through the material. They're all non-professional actors in this film, and so everybody approaches it differently. Some people are at their best when they're going off-book and inventing, and some people are at their best when they take five and really try to master the written material. I will say that this film probably had less improvisation than in my previous two, partially because of the nature of the story. There's a ton of exposition in this film, there's a lot of information being crammed in. Almost every scene features references to off-screen characters and off-screen action. That all has to get kind of jammed in there. Hopefully it doesn't feel like weighty exposition. That was one of the big challenges in making this movie, throwing out a lot of information and not having it drag the narrative. And also I think these actors are probably less inclined to ad-lib than in some of the other studio films. So it's pretty on the script.
Q: I think one of my favorite parts was when Corinne was like the physical manifestation between Amanda and Jeneane. Where did you draw from for that character? Because she was so such a spot-on bitch.
BUJALSKI: You thought Corinne was a bitch?
Q: I thought she had her bitchy moments.
BUJALSKI: Interesting. Most of the people in the film are around my age, around their early thirties. And my notion of that character... I initially wanted Beth to be someone much younger. I like the idea of having a younger person in training. Anybody who's ever owned a small business with young employees may know what I mean. I moved to Allston recently, but I was living in Jamaica Plain for a long time and my downstairs neighbor ran a video store; and she'd always have these great, young kid employees who were often flakey in the way that twenty three year-olds are. They would sometimes be inspired, and sometimes very dry. And I just wanted to try to get some sense of that. And I ended up casting Katie O'Connor, who is older than that - she's in her mid-thirties - but she was so good when we did the screen test. I always had like one person in each of my films who never gives you something bad; just what you want. I mean, every frame that Katie was in she absolutely brought that feeling that I wanted; of somebody who's really sweet, but it just kind of out of her depth in life. Sometimes that's an employee you want, and sometimes that's an employee you really don't want. [He laughs] But Katie was perfect in that role and I'm so happy to have her in it.
Q: Why is it that in your films some things are simply left unresolved?
BUJALSKI: I believe that there's a difference between an ending and a resolution. This film, and all my films, I believe, absolutely have beginnings, middles and ends. There's a whole story being told. But what they don't have is resolution. I don't think the stories I'm trying to tell would support conventional resolutions. Certainly, if you could imagine this movie being what it is, and then, in the last minute, you find out exactly what's going to happen to everybody... I don't think that would ring true given everything that comes before, and everywhere we've been pointing. My dream for the movie is that an hour from now, a day from now, a week from now it will still live on in your consciousness somehow; that there will still be things to work out in your own mind about it, and it will still be interesting to you. I've seen a lot of films, especially quote-unquote "Indie" films that seemd to have tacked-on resolutions. There have been films that I've liked right up until the last three minutes, and I think, Why are you doing this? Everything that I found interesting about this doesn't need to be wrapped-up to escort people out of the theater. I want to take home what's interesting about this film. I don't want it to be finished for me in that sense. Not everybody agrees with me about this. And not everybody wants to see the same things as I do on screen.
