As you’ve probably heard by now, Joe Swanberg’s new webseries, Butterknife, is going to premiere here on Spout in January (and if you haven’t heard, you can watch the trailer above). Butterknife stars Ronnie Bronstein, who recently won a Gotham award and is nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Frownland.
The show is a kind of comedy of manners, tracking Bronstein’s private investigator from professional foibles and communication breakdowns on the streets of Brooklyn, to the blissful home life he shares with his adorable wife (played by Ronnie’s real-life wife Mary, who co-starred in Frownland). It’s sort of like Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Early Years, except Larry’s a detective, and Cheryl can actually stand to be around him.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be bringing you interviews with the cast and crew of Butterknife every Friday. We’re doing this as an email chain: I sent Joe some questions, he sent Ronnie some questions, Ronnie sent Mary some questions, and so on. Below the jump, you’ll find my interview with Joe. Check out the Butterknife page on Spout, and check back here next week for some Joe-on-Ronnie action. But not in, like, a dirty way. You know what I mean.
SPOUT: Word association: when I hear “detective show”, I think of Moonlighting and Columbo. What do you immediately think when you hear “detective”?
SWANBERG: I think of Elliott Gould and The Long Goodbye. I really like that film. I don’t really get TV associations. Maybe Murder, She Wrote.
Butterknife is the first project you’ve directed that was shot entirely outside of Chicago. What are the pros and cons of working away from your homebase?
It’s tough for me. While I was shooting the first half of the season, I kept thinking how much easier everything would be if I was in Chicago. But I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I don’t have a home base in NY. It’s hard to produce something while you’re staying on friends’ couches and stealing internet signals and working harder than usual just to find your way around. The city itself is really beautiful, and we were never hassled while we were shooting, but in general it took more effort than I would have liked. The end result is worth it. It feels different than the other work I’ve made, and I like that.
Tell us something about one of the BUTTERKNIFE cast members that you didn’t know that you learned while making the show. In general I have learned the most about Mary Bronstein from working on the show. She’s a really cool person. I met her at SXSW this year, but it was really through talking about Butterknife and shooting it that we were able to open up to each other more.
Ronnie and Mary have let me into their lives in a really amazing way. I was able to go hang out at Ronnie’s parents’ house and have dinner with his family and that was really special for me. I learned that they are both ice cream-aholics, just like me. When I stay with them, we consume unhealthy amounts of the stuff. And Mary and I are both candy fiends. She always has a big bowl of candy around and we fuel each other’s sugar addictions.
As far back as Kissing on the Mouth, your work has been divisive–it seems like people either love it, or it makes them really angry. Is there anything that makes *you* really angry?
Sure. Lots of things do. The war in Iraq makes me really angry. The education system in this country makes me really angry. My wife teaches at one of the worst high-schools in Chicago, and she comes home with stories that are so fucked up you wouldn’t believe it. She is teaching seniors in high school who still can’t read! Almost totally illiterate. And they have been passed through the grades because nobody wants to deal with them. It’s infuriating. I’m going to work with low-income and at-risk kids this summer making a movie, and hopefully I can give them the tools and encouragement they need to document their lives the same way my friends and I have been documenting ours.
What was the last thing you saw on YouTube that made your eyes pop out of your head?
Kent Osborne makes really great YouTube videos that you can see at his page. He is a great documenter of events, and really captures the mood of things well. His short film, babycat aka: Good Luck With The World, is especially good.
But to be totally honest, I think How Mumblecore Saved My Life was the last thing I saw that really shocked me. It was extremely weird for me to see that video. I’m still trying to process it.
