Daryl Wein
Interview
A couple of days ago, I got the chance to talk to Daryl Wein (Breaking Upwards, Sex Positive). We chatted about his first feature narrative, working with a girlfriend, mumblecore and a bunch of other stuff. Daryl was obviously tired from a busy day, but he was nice enough to be barraged with more questions.
Alex Thebez: Where do you see yourself in relation to the current generation of Brooklyn filmmakers today? Do you associate yourself with the mumblecore genre?
Daryl Wein: No, I don’t consider myself to be part of the mumblecore movement at all. I would consider myself to be part of the “D.I.Y.”, Do It Yourself film movement, but I’m trying to do something much different from the mumblecore movement where the characters are more thoughtful and more interesting and more complex and there’s more production value and story than in the mumblecore movies.
AT: Totally. One of the reasons why I brought that up is that I saw the movie with a couple of my friends and they mentioned [mumblecores]. But I think there is a fundamental difference that is very evident in your movies but at the same time there are similarities because Breaking Upwards is about young people.
DW: The difference is also that [the film] has such a strong inter-generational storyline with the parents that no other mumblecore film really has, which is yet another departure from the mumblecore movement. Like what you are saying, we do share the similarities that the story focuses on twenty-somethings, but I think the parents definitely set it apart.
AT: Yeah, I have to say the parents in [Breaking Upwards] are pretty awesome. They definitely bring the film together, at least for me personally. Julie White, especially, is really awesome. I read that the film is based on your real life experiences with [Zoe Lister-Jones]. I’m wondering how much of it was real and how much of it was fictional to serve narrative purposes of the film?
DW: Well all the broad strokes of it are real but the details and the majority are fictionalized. So it is inspired by a real open relationship that we were in, but the rest is fiction. You know, the main plot points are things that we actually went through.
AT: Oh, so the characters and stuff are pretty much mostly fictional?
DW: Yeah, the story is all fictionalized.
AT: But the emotional points of the relationship between you and Zoe in the film are based on the real life experiences?
DW: Exactly. The broad strokes were real.
AT: Yeah. I think your film kind of captured the feeling of a modern relationship pretty accurately.
AT: It’s funny that after the movie, one of my friends was telling me how he felt the movie brought up some of the most stressful moments that he had experienced in his last long term relationship. Hearing that, it kind of confirmed that you are onto something here and are very perceptive of the generation.
DW: Awesome, thank you.
AT: Yeah. Well, sorry if I’m probing but are you still seeing Zoe?
DW: Yeah, we are a couple in real life.
AT: Oh, when you guys were working on the film, what motivated the two of you to decide that this would work as a film, or as a project in general?
DW: Right when we entered into breaking apart from each other and eventually seeing other people, from the beginning I thought it would be a funny idea for a romantic comedy because we were strategizing how to break up together. So immediately I wanted to start making it into a screenplay, even though Zoe felt differently about that. I actually started writing it with a friend of mine, Peter Duchan, who I grew up with and we actually wrote it together for about a year and then Zoe came forth later. All three of us developed the idea together later.
AT: What convinced Zoe to finally join in on it and develop the project further?
DW: We got back together, that was one thing and I always wanted Zoe to play the part before I was going to play the part. That had something to do with it. We just wanted to collaborate with her.
AT: Did it prove to be challenging, working with Zoe, especially considering your history? Or was the making of the film rather therapeutic, bringing you guys closer because of the experience?
DW: Yeah, it was intense since it was based on our relationship. But, we worked well together. It is always stressful when you are collaborating on a movie with someone that closely. Working together and being a couple, the movie started taking over our personal lives. But it strengthened us in many ways. It made us better with communication and trust, and it all went well!
AT: That’s good to hear. One of the other things about the film is that I find the banter and the conversations that the characters have in the film feel really natural. I was wondering whether there was any improv involved in the film, if at all?
DW: The majority of the film was scripted. Like, 95% of it was script. But the actors were always encouraged to add something that they got inspired to do too. There was definitely some improvised lines especially from Julie White and Andrea Martin.
AT: That’s really cool, because I find the dialogue works really well. It does not feel forced and is really smart and witty at the same time. Oh, Breaking Upwards also looks very different. Like, one of the things that made Breaking Upwards stand apart from the mumblecore genre is its aesthetics. It looks very gritty and contrasty even though the story was cheeky and lighthearted. What ideas and thoughts did you and your DP, Alex Bergman, share while working with in the film? And what kind of technical decisions did you guys decide on for the film?
DW: We wanted the film to look as beautiful as we could even though we were shooting on a digital camera. I didn’t want it to feel like there was no lighting like mumblecore movies that are shot low budget. So the lighting and the colours are meant to make it look better than a $15,000 movie, so it’d look like a bigger movie — but also to reflect on the heightened emotional state of what the characters are going through, which is why the colours have so much pop and punch as to reflect the emotional intensity of the events in the film.
AT: What was the hardest part of putting a narrative fiction together? How was it different from your documentary, Sex Positive?
DW: You know, a documentary can take a long time because you don’t always know where the story is going. My documentary, it was based on a man’s life, but it was mostly historical footage. It was a shorter process. I think it took only about eight months. But for a narrative like Breaking Upwards, we spent a lot of time writing it. It took like a year and a few months into shooting. But what I learned from the doc process is how to concisely organize information in the editing process and really make sure you are telling an interesting focused story that’s not repetitive and uninteresting. They are similar and different.
AT: What are your influences? What pushes you to keep making movies? Is there a theme that you are specifically attracted to? I saw your short film Unlocked, and your documentary Sex Positive. They are definitely a lot darker in comparison to Breaking Upwards.
DW: I think Unlocked and Sex Positive are much darker movies, but I’m not just interested in one tone or one subject. As a filmmaker, I’m just looking at whatever will be an interesting, relevant and fresh subject. That’s what all my films are born out of. So in terms of influences, I mean, for Breaking Upwards I think Woody Allen is definitely an influence and a bunch of Hal Ashby movies, Norman Jewison who made Moonstruck. Yeah, a bunch of other filmmakers but yeah those are a couple.
DW: Zoe and I have a couple of scripts that we wrote, and we are trying to get those made. They are New York-centric relationship stories, but we’d like to make them on a bigger scale, more than $15,000.
Thanks again to Daryl for taking the time to talk to us. You can check out his short film Unlocked and the trailers for his films over at his website.
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