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| Anna Biller Innerview
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You're currently working
on a feature flick based loosely on the look and themes of those old PLAYBOY
liquor ads, right? We're doing the math and wondering: if it takes 'x' amount
of time it takes for you to make for an Anna Biller short flick, then what is
'y' to equal for an Anna Biller feature?
Oh gosh, I hope
Viva isn't the movie where my hair will turn white before I finish it.
No, but seriously, because I'm doing a movie from a more
 modern
period the art direction is much simpler, and that cuts the production time
down by quite a bit. But you always have to weigh everything. You don't want a
decade to go by as you're obsessing over details, but you don't want to put out
a piece of schlock. A lot of people spend years raising a big budget so
they can delegate out all the work, then they make a fast, sloppy movie where
they themselves don't have to work that hard. But I prefer to spend the time
making and collecting the perfect objects and costumes, and then shooting the
movie in pieces with all of the details intact. I've heard that even Hitchcock
started off that way, doing everything himself. But I am getting a little tired
of how long things take, and trying to see if I can come up with a slightly
larger budget to make things go a little faster.
 I'm really excited about
Viva, it's going to be the strangest thing I've ever made. At first you
look at those old liquor and cigarette ads and off-color jokes from
Playboy and you think they're kind of nightmarish, but they also contain
something we lack today, which is a kind of wild pleasure, and everyone's
laughing and feelin' sexy, and it's actually kind of cheerful. Nowadays they
promote sex but everyone's so glum, there's no joie de vivre. I want to
go into that whole Playboy world from the early 70's, and also some of
the sex comedies and softcore movies from the time, and make a
 really
unhinged, insane, colorful, fun movie out of it. The main character is a young
housewife named Barbi, who is lured into the whole sex and orgy world and then
returns to her life in suburbia. But there's also some wife-swapping that goes
on with her and her husband and another couple, and some weird sexual things
with her boss, so suburbia ends up being just as much about sex as the orgy
world. It's like the whole Playboy world in that it doesn't matter if
you're married or single or conservative or a hippy or a housewife or a
prostitute, everyone is totally obsessed with sex and swept along in the madcap
sexual revolution. It's a really naughty movie on many levels, but then again I
have to keep surprising myself with my own naughtiness to keep the work fresh
and alive. |
Like
the Innerview? Own the Collected Works of Anna B. in
This
is Anna Biller
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