Teddy Wayne

Americans in Paris are a common literary trope, but Rosecrans Baldwin has rejuvenated the expat genre with his new, wryly astute fish-out-of-water memoir, Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down (FSG). Baldwin's first novel, You Lost Me There, was named one of NPR's Best...

Ben Fountain rose to critical acclaim with his 2006 debut collection of short stories, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, which netted the Dallas-based author a raft of honors, including the PEN/Hemingway and a Whiting Writers' Award. His first novel, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk...

Where would David Foster Wallace have turned for help with his love life? He "may have been sympathetic to the just-published Much Ado About Loving, in which the writers Jack Murnighan and Maura Kelly plumb great literature for relationship advice," according to the New...

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John Warner, a longtime editor for Dave Eggers's website, McSweeney's Internet Tendency and contributor to The Morning News, is the author of three humor books. He's now set to make his literary debut with The Funny Man (Soho Press), a tragicomic novel...

On September 16, 2001, Jenna M. McKnight, then a newspaper reporter in Indiana, sent a letter to a few dozen friends and family members, asking for their responses to September 11. The letter spread to strangers, and the contributions, most submitted in the weeks following 9/11 and collected over a...

Ben Lerner is the author of three books of poetry: The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw, and Mean Free Path, all from Copper Canyon Press. Angle of Yaw was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2006, and Lerner has also won a...

In 1989, Stefan Merrill Block's grandmother burned many of her late husband's letters. She never fully explained her reasons or what those letters contained, and in the years after her death, Block sought to fill in that lacuna in the family history with research...

In the not too distant future of Anna North's debut novel, America Pacifica, Darcy lives on the island of America Pacifica -- one of the last habitable places on earth after the second ice age. What follows is a harrowing dystopian...

Filmmaker Emily Carmichael debuted her delightfully inventive fantasy-comedy short film The Hunter and the Swan Discuss Their Meeting at Sundance this year. The creator of a slew of genre-mashing shorts, including the animated retro-video-game Ledo and lx series, Carmichael is a New York native now based in Brooklyn, a graduate of Harvard, and holds an MFA in filmmaking from NYU. We talked with the rising star about her attraction to sci-fi, her advice about Sundance, and her celebrity encounter with a cast member of The West Wing.

What was the best part about being a first-time filmmaker at Sundance this January?

Sundance is kind of like Burning Man -- a temporary, annually reconvening mini-society forged around extreme climate conditions and substance abuse. In the case of Sundance, the substances are Kobe beef sliders and Stella. (At SXSW the weather is mild but the sliders are far more intense.) I actually had some prior experience with Sundance, since in 2009 and 2010 the Ledo and Ix movies were at Slamdance, which is in Park City at the same time. So by the time I was there this year I was familiar with the party circuit and running into a lot of familiar people, including this one guy I think is named Rob who has been literally at every festival I have ever attended.

But it WAS my first time at the Sundance director's brunch, a several-hundred-person extravaganza where Robert Redford says fierce things about the close-mindedness of the studio system and the undesirability of the hype that's developed around the festival. I was impressed by his honesty -- he described independent filmmaking as pretty much a constant uphill battle and avoided any kind of "you've arrived now" sentiment.

Did you have any celebrity run-ins (that you can tell us about)?

I was talking to someone at a party and at some point I started thinking "I know this man SO WELL from something with which I'm INCREDIBLY FAMILIAR, but I can't think of it right now, because of all the sliders and Stella," so finally I asked him and he was like, "Have you ever seen the show The West Wing?

HE WAS TOBY. (I mean he was Richard Shiff, but) HE WAS TOBY FROM WEST WING. This is actually the first celebrity encounter to impress my aunt, which I was pretty stoked about.

You must have applied to Sundance before. What advice do you have for other filmmakers about the application process?

The first year I applied, I submitted three films. I didn't get in, and didn't think much more about it, but some programmers got in touch with me months later and invited me to submit to other festivals, which worked out great. I got to meet Barry Mendel at Cinevegas; he's a producer I really admire -- that actually still stands out in my mind as a great festival encounter. So good things can happen, even if your film doesn't play at the Sundance that year.

Can you tell us a little about your next film, tentatively titled Arrow?

Arrow is a science-fiction adventure that cuts back and forth between the characters saving the world and struggling to negotiate everyday life afterward. Three years ago, in a madcap alternate-reality Brooklyn, a daring but jaded criminal and his stoic first mate learned to care again by protecting an otherworldly young woman from the various factions seeking to exploit her strange powers. But now it's three years later, and all of them need jobs.

So the world-saving parts of the story are fun, fully-realized sci-fi, and the everyday-life-negotiating is a character-driven indie comedy that turns the sci-fi archetypes inside out. The film is designed to use each mode of storytelling to enrich the other, flashing back and forth between them for maximum comedic and dramatic effect.

In The Hunter and the Swan, you put a magical shapeshifter and a fablelike hunter at a dinner table with a couple of hipsters. In the Ledo and Ix series, you ask what would happen if video game characters began to question why they have to do all these inane quests, and whether that's what they really want to do with their lives. And in Arrow, you're talking about combining a sci-fi adventure film with a relationship-driven indie comedy. Why all this mashing of elements and genres?

I think combining genres is really exciting! It raises exponentially the story elements at your disposal. Genres give us a wealth of character archetypes and worlds and themes to play with, but they can also be a little confining. They predetermine outcomes to a large degree. For me, the moment of realizing you can switch from one to the other is electric. It's been fun to experience that moment of reveal in The Hunter and the Swan with different audiences at different film festivals.

With Arrow, I want to make a movie for people who have a nostalgic connection to science-fiction. For lots of us, Voltron or Labyrinth or Star Wars on VHS was the first place we learned about love or formed our ideas about justice and beauty. Those tropes have lots of nostalgic importance, but we still want to engage in grown-up issues in a real way. In fact, we just may have some grown-up issues from watching so much adventure fiction as...

Diana Spechler, author of the critically acclaimed novel Who By Fire (Harper Perennial, 2008), has a new book out that's already stirring up controversy. Skinny is the story of 26-year-old Gray Lachmann, a compulsive eater reeling from her father's death who goes to work at a...

Hailed as a "brashly experimental debut" by ELLE and "full of gems" by Vanity Fair, Helen Phillips's imaginative book And Yet They Were Happy (Leapfrog Press, May 1, 2011) falls somewhere between novel, poetry, short story collection, autobiography and fantasy...

The raw, unsettling independent film Bad Fever premieres at SXSW on Friday, March 11. Directed by Dustin Guy Defa, the film follows Eddie, a rambling, schizophrenic-sounding twentysomething loner who may be the world's worst aspiring stand-up comedian, and his courtship of Irene, a drifter with an unseemly means of making a living. Part The King of Comedy, part Taxi Driver, Bad Fever showcases nuanced acting from Kentucker Audley (Open Five, Holy Land, Team Picture), a veteran director and actor in the mumblecore scene, and Eleonore Hendricks, a photographer and accomplished actress (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Go Get Some Rosemary). I spoke with them both about improvisation, how their other artistic roles inform their acting, and the inevitability of a 3-D mumblecore film.

Unlike most mumblecore films, this one actually contains a tremendous amount of real mumbling on the part of Kentucker's character Eddie, who rambles and repeats phrases and speaks to himself as much as to anyone else, even when performing stand-up comedy. First, was there any explicit discussion of what Eddie's pathology is? And second, how much improvisation did each of you bring to your characters?

KENTUCKER: Dustin and I talked about this quite a bit initially. I don't think either of us ever wanted to give Eddie a specific social disorder. For me, because I wanted to be instinctual and creative, and not tie myself to pathology.

We had long discussions about what was wrong with this guy and the furthest we wanted to go was he was questionably socialized. There's an old-fashioned way he speaks that he must have picked up from old movies or only being around weirdo adults, with very little peer interaction.

Yes, he does stammer and mumble, but his speech is often formal. He says things like: "Unfortunately, I will not be able to take a no from you at this time," and "Mother, I have prepared your Diet Coke on the bedside and there are pork chops in the fridge should you want them."

But like I said, I was working primarily from instinct, which probably means I was using a lot of myself in the character -- some dark, sad, isolated part of myself.

The way I came to the character was through the stand-up routine -- all his real-life interactions are basically an extension of the way he practices his act into his tape recorder.

Most of the dialogue was improvised, but there was a script and we went by it in regards to structure and plotting.

Eleonore, did you establish what Irene's background was, or did you leave it ambiguous in your own mind?

ELEONORE: I wanted to get familiar with who Irene was before playing her, sure! But her background wasn't as important to me as her character, her nature, the kind of gal she was. In the script she's a girl who stays alone in an abandoned school, hangs out at gas stations, and makes VHS recordings of herself for men for money. Given her circumstances one could make her out to have some tragic history -- I wasn't into that idea, nor was Dustin. She reminded me of an old high school friend of mine. This friend had been in my life for about two years before taking off and leaving the school and leaving a deep impression on me. I can still hear her voice, and see her mannerisms; I remember her clothes, and her impact on other students. She was more mature than the rest of us, more solitary. In private she would share her poetry and wild stories of the boys and men she'd been with, she would often miss school, or come in telling me about these bouts she'd had with her mother. The memory of this friend was a good foundation for my understanding of Irene.

I can't become that girl, but I thought about her while shooting, it made the character make sense to me, and then I brought along myself.

There were certainly times when I lost track of Irene's voice. Times where I felt too much of my own instinct in a scene or where I was confused about how Irene would act or react, and that's frustrating. When this happened, Dustin and I would wrassle with it, Kentucker and I would mull it over, and I often conferred with the other ladies on that small crew. We were, at times, all in on making that character come alive.

Overall, I think Kentucker brought more improvisation to Eddie than I did with Irene, but I felt very free to use my own language with the written script.

You've both acted before, but you've also both filled in other roles on movies, and Eleonore is a photographer. How does your directing influence your acting, Kentucker, and does your photography have an effect on your acting, Eleonore?

KENTUCKER: I don't think it did. Even though I have technically "directed" films, I don't feel much like a director. I don't engulf my films with a vision; I let them unfold. And everyone is playing themselves so nothing's a stretch -- the only technique is to figure how to forget the camera and act like you would. But with this film, I had to change my speaking pattern, create new mannerisms and language. I had to make creative decisions that I would never have to make in the world of my films.

Honestly, I didn't want to do this film because I didn't think I could pull it off. There were believability issues with the script -- the first draft had my character rob a bank and kill a man --and I was fundamentally opposed to using unbelievable elements. I initially told Dustin to keep looking. (I wanted him to cast Tim Morton, who played my roommate in Team Picture.)

The biggest factor in changing my mind was my interest in stand-up comedy. Motivation to write jokes and come up with a stage persona was an exciting idea. So I made sure I could write my own jokes, and then said yes to the part.

I'm glad I did, and I know acting in this film will change my approach to directing. I'm more sympathetic to the actor's plight. It's a volatile job. And, also, I think I'll make different types of films now. I've always made hyper-realistic movies because I could never suspend disbelief, but having played a character like Eddie, I understand on a new level the artistry of make-believe.

ELEONORE: I think my photography and my acting are closely linked. I'm curious about the beauty of the human condition; a full spectrum, its vastness and subtly. I'm always trying to deepen my understanding. These art forms allow me explore and share my discoveries. I'm more comfortable and practiced as a photographer. Acting is so bizarre because you're using yourself as a tool and I know I have a lot more to learn about my mechanics. In a way, portrait-making and looking at life has been a great resource for learning to act.

For many years I had a job as a street scout where I would stop a stranger with a particular look and ask to take a photograph them. In my new work I'm exploring womanhood by photographing my friends and other girls and women in my life. I also consistently photograph my day-to-day.

The personalities I meet and photograph stay with me; they affect me. I don't think I try to act as my subjects, but the personalities rub off and influence me, with or without my knowing. Acting, like my portraiture, is a means of expressing a human story, in full color.

What's next for both of you?

KENTUCKER: I've acted in a couple things recently: one of Joe Swanberg's new art sex films, as well as a short by Adam Wingard (A Horrible Way to Die), and several other acting parts are supposed to happen this year. Also, I'm editing Open Five 2, the sequel to my last film, Open Five, and planning for the last two films in the series, one a murder-mystery-inspired cheating movie, and the finale, Open Five 4 in 3-D, for the throng of fans waiting for a 3-D mumblecore movie.

I'm also starting to get interested in the internet. I'm working on a Tumblr site that releases/compiles free no-budget movies called No Budge. And I started this site Address4Anybody, which anyone can log in to and post anything.

ELEONORE: After going to SXSW for Bad Fever, I'll be working on a new slasher film by Adam Wingard. I'm excited about the rest of the cast on this one too, some really good people involved. The other film I'm looking forward to sharing with an audience is an experimental fiction/dream/docu-drama by Maiko Endo, Kuichisan, shot in November 2009 in Okinawa and Tokyo, Japan. I'm also currently casting my friend Adam Leon's first feature film, Gimme the Loot, to be shot this summer in NYC.

And, as always, I continue to make portraits and other photographs, and I'm working on a collaborative Photobook project with a friend of mine based in Berlin.
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Jane Borden wears a number of hats: Time Out New York editor, stand-up comedian and performer, comedy writer with credits ranging from The New York Times Magazine to Saturday Night Live, and now her first book, I Totally Meant to Do That, a collection of humorous...

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Mumblecore, the nascent film genre made by, about, and for navel-gazing, semi-articulate urban twenty-somethings, has gotten a bad rap for being about, well, navel-gazing, semi-articulate urban twenty-somethings. Memphis-based Kentucker Audley is one of the few mumblecore directors from the South, and in just a few years...

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