Outfest / HollyShorts 2018 - Girl Talk
Girl Talk follows 20-something Mia, as she explores the disparity between emotional and physical intimacy, coming to a head when she meets an intriguing couple.
Interview with Writer/Director Erica Rose
Watch Girl Talk here:
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
A couple years ago, I started writing a feature film and found myself frustrated with the outcome. I felt as if I wasn’t being honest with myself and my own experiences and it was being reflected through my work. I decided to challenge and confront myself in a way that was acutely vulnerable and personal. Never had I written anything that was taken from my life, and I knew that in order to advance myself as an artist in the way I wanted to, I had to approach topics that were unresolved. Girl Talk is about a time in my life where I used sex to gain agency and control over people because I was so afraid of what it meant to be truly intimate with someone. It was a lonely, dark period, but since making this film, I’ve finally begun to make peace with that part of my life.
I’ve been living as an out gay woman for years, but had never made a truly queer film before Girl Talk. I didn’t want to be a director defined by my sexuality, but have since embraced my identity and how it informs my art. I wrote the first draft of the script and brought it to my eventual producing partner Chelsea Moore. She believed in me and this project, which encouraged me to keep improving the script and moving forward. Both she and I were frustrated with the false dichotomy many queer films fall under.
Girl Talk is a film centered around the complexities of sex, love and intimacy through the lens of Mia, a young and queer-identified protagonist. Girl Talk is about the in-between. It is not the coming out story, it's not about a secret affair, no one dies at the end. We're showing queer stories that are happening now, that represent the stories we've experienced and the stories of our young queer community. My goal with Girl Talk isn’t to proselytize a rhetoric, but to show female characters with agency, complexity, faults, and triumphs. Showing queer women take their sexuality into their own hands is not just a radical act, but a story that our culture needs and wants to see.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
This is a film made by queer women, for queer women. In the past couple of years, we’ve seen a rise in representation of queer female stories – Blue is the Warmest Color, Carol, and The Handmaiden, to name a few – yet all of those films are directed by men. I love those films for various reasons, but I was frustrated with these men telling the stories that I’m actually experiencing. Girl Talk is made from a truly queer femme perspective. It’s one thing to see a queer female relationship on camera, but it’s another thing to see that relationship written, directed, and performed by people who have those relationships.
Although Girl Talk takes place in the specific world of queer femme life in Brooklyn, we believe anyone can relate to the universal themes of love, sex, rejection and intimacy that Girl Talk reflects. Our main character Mia, played by the brilliant Hannah Hodson, confronts her own relationship to sex and intimacy in a way, in which anyone, can relate to, regardless of demographic,.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
People don’t talk about sex, especially when it comes to un-sexy experiences, devoid of romance; experiences filled with confusion, dissatisfaction, and loneliness. But this kind of sex happens all around us, and it happened to me. In our culture, we are inundated with the sexuality of women. We see this through a context of their commodified sex appeal, rather than their own thoughts and desires. We don’t see what women fantasize about, what they want in sex, what they don’t want, how they experience pleasure. I’ve always been fascinated by female sexuality and have centered my filmmaking and writing around this.
In the beginning of my filmmaking career, I used to think that if I was going to make films about women, I needed all of my characters to be strong. As I continued creating and writing, I realized that I’m not the kind of director who makes films about strong female characters. Strength, as a concept, is boring to me. My characters are heavily flawed, but they have agency and complexity. They are multilayered and raw. They are not always honest with their partners or themselves, but as a director, I always strive to tell their story with candor. I don’t necessarily want answers, but I continuously question the heteronormative, white, patriarchal definitions of women and relationships that we’re conditioned to accept.
Girl Talk is about what happens when someone uses sex as a way to gain control, and what happens when that control is lost. Inevitably, painful conversations come to fruition. Throughout the film we see Mia constantly at odds with herself and those around her. She’s in opposition, nearly defiant, and set in her ways. We see her systematically lose control, to the point where she must confront her own lies she’s been telling herself. She’s not the only one who has gone through this, nor am I.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
My first collaborators on Girl Talk were Chelsea, Hannah and my production designer, Madeline Wall. Each worked with me in different ways to advance the story. My initial drafts of Girl Talk were very autobiographical, down to specific dialogue. It was a more brutal take of the whole course of events. Chelsea was absolutely instrumental in helping sculpt the narrative into something more palatable and poignant. At the end of the day, life is not narrative. Therefore, you need to instill creative licensing in order to have the greatest tonal and emotional impact.
With Hannah playing Mia, I began to tailor the script in her favor. We collaborated on Mia’s dialogue, actions and general disposition. I’ve worked with Maddie for years and she’s incredible at translating the text into something visually compelling and robust. We knew from early on that we wanted Mia’s world to feel heightened and painted. Every scene has a specific color, which reflects her internal state of being that she might be suppressing. The color of the scene is a constant reminder that Mia cannot escape herself, no matter how hard she tries.
Chelsea and I wanted to bring on department heads as early as possible in the process. In addition to Maddie and Hannah, we attached our casting director Matt Glasner, our post producer/editor Catie Stickels, our 1st AD Maggie Callis, our composer BIRCH and our cinematographer Daisy Zhou and each brought their own artistic excellence to the project, which elevated the film. Chelsea and I approached various channels in financing. Eventually, we partnered with Seed & Spark for a crowdfunding campaign. Our Executive Producers Alessandra Clark, Abby Pucker, and Paige Grand Pré helped bring the rest of the financing together.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
First off, everyone is enraptured by the performances. Because Hannah was attached to the project from the beginning, Chelsea and I felt very confident in going for the actors we wanted, with the help of our amazing casting director Matt. Every actor in this film is brilliant. It was my dream cast and the audience definitely agrees with me. People are also blown away by our cinematography and design, which does not surprise me because we fought to get, in my opinion, the best non-union production designer and cinematographer working in New York today.
On a more story level, so many people, of varied demographics, have come up to me or Chelsea and have expressed so much affinity to Mia and what she faces in this story. I do not need the validation of a straight, cis, white man, but it does speak to the universal truth of Girl Talk when one comes up to me after the film in tears saying how much he related to this film. Our goal was always to make people feel something, so we hope we continue to do that as we take the film around the world.
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
During some of our screenings, there were moments where the audience burst out into laughter in scenes that weren’t supposed to be funny, necessarily. I think a lot of the laughter stems from discomfort. We are taking the audience for a ride. I love it. Any emotion you feel after watching this film is valid and the more reactions the better.
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visible on www.wearemovingstories.com?
We would love to get more visibility for this film across other online platforms or film festivals.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
We need more journalists! Come at us!
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
Of course, we want to play at as many film festivals as possible. Ultimately though, I want this film to cement that queer women have agency over their sexuality. This is a deviation from the male gaze, and a reclamation of a narrative that has been systematically stripped away from us.
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
What does Mia feel at the end of the film?
The last shot of the film is inspired by my favorite painting: Edward Hopper’s A Woman in the Sun. In the painting, you see a naked woman, staring out a window, holding a cigarette, contemplative, yet harmonious. The painting is beautifully ambiguous. We don’t know if she’s at the end of a tragic affair or in the post-passionate throws of a novel romance or if she ran away from her life, excited for her new beginning. Girl Talk ends similarly. It’s a new beginning for Mia, yet her next step is unknown.
Would you like to add anything else?
No cis-men appear in this film. We only have women or non-binary characters and actors. It was important to me to portray my world of queer dating in Brooklyn and frankly men are just not really relevant to that conversation. We also had a primarily women or non-binary led crew, which was exactly what this story needed.
What other projects are the key creatives developing or working on now?
Chelsea and I are currently developing an episodic anthology series based on Girl Talk about queer, femme sexuality in Brooklyn, NY. Chelsea is also in production for a feature documentary about a drag and burlesque group in Brooklyn.
Interview: July 2018
We Are Moving Stories embraces new voices in drama, documentary, animation, TV, web series, music video, women's films, LGBTQIA+, POC, First Nations, scifi, supernatural, horror, world cinema. If you have just made a film - we'd love to hear from you. Or if you know a filmmaker - can you recommend us? More info: Carmela
Girl Talk
Girl Talk follows 20-something Mia, as she explores the disparity between emotional and physical intimacy, coming to a head when she meets an intriguing couple.
Length: 17 min
Director: Erica Rose
Producer: Chelsea Moore
Writer: Erica Rose
About the writer, director and producer:
ERICA ROSE (writer/director) is a Brooklyn-based writer, director, and producer working in narrative, commercial, documentary, and music video mediums. She’s the co-founder of Sour Peach Films. Taking pride in being queer and femme, Sour Peach focuses on stories about female sexuality, portraits of individuals who are often forgotten or overlooked in mainstream media, and exploring identity within new contexts.
Chelsea Moore (producer) is a multi-faceted filmmaker working in documentary, commercial & narrative formats in the US & abroad. Chelsea is 1/2 of Sour Peach Films.
Key cast: Hannah Hodson, Kea Trevett, Alia Guidry, Erica Pappas, Diane Chen
Looking for: film festival directors, journalists
Facebook: Girl Talk
Twitter: @sourpeachfilms
Instagram: @sourpeachfilms, @girl_talk_film_, @ear360, @chelseaalisonmoore
Other: www.sourpeachfilms.com
Funders: Seed & Spark, Self, 3oC
Made in association with: Experimental Bitch, The Film Collaborative, Seed & Spark.
Where can I watch it next and in the coming month? This month we’re screening at HollyShorts, the North Carolina Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and aGLIFF. Stay tuned for more festival announcements this coming Fall!