Time for another link in our Butterknife email chain. This week, Butterknife creator Joe Swanberg interviews Ronnie Bronstein. In addition to starring in Butterknife, Ronnie is the writer/director of Frownland, for which he’s up for an Independent Spirit Award.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be bringing you interviews with the cast and crew of Butterknife every Friday. Next week, Ronnie interviews Mary Bronstein, co-star of Butterknife and Frownland (and Ronnie’s wife). And do check out the Butterknife page on Spout for further updates.

Previous links in the chain: Karina interviews Joe.

JOE SWANBERG: Do you feel manipulated by me when you are working on Butterknife? Am I exploiting you and Mary for my own artistic and personal benefit?

RONNIE BRONSTEIN: Haha. Sure I feel manipulated by you, but only in the most benign sense of the word. I mean, by agreeing to be in the project, right, I’m essentially agreeing to let you ‘handle’ and ‘manage’ me and my time, which to be honest, is sort of unnerving.

But then again, we both know that we’d never ever shoot a single frame of the show if it was left up to me. I’m always groping to find some kind of petty weasel-ey excuse to put it off. Seriously, if I found out that a relative of mine died or something on a week we were supposed to shoot, deep down, amidst the grief, some part of me would actually be happy cause it would mean I wouldn’t have to shoot Butterknife that day. So yeah, you are kind of manipulating me…but more in the way a parent is forced to ‘manipulate’ their kid onto the school-bus or something.

As for exploitation…

Well, the problem for me isn’t so much you exploiting me as it is my own insecurities that I won’t be able to give you something WORTH exploiting. Ugh. ‘Cause the second I’m forced to think about myself and actively try and access and isolate the behavioral traits that I sense you want to exploit, well, I sort of get all gummed-up and grossly self-conscious. I mean, I don’t want to make it sound more deep than it is, but I find the act of looking inward - trying to nail down one’s own essence and package it - to be sort of stultifying. Once the camera is rolling and I’m provided with enough stimuli, well, I sort of become invisible to myself, which is good. It’s painless. But the second the camera is turned off, I’m tossed right back into the same totally reluctant, paralyzed state.

You know, I still haven’t actually watched the trailer. And I’m pretty dedicated to never watching the finished episodes either. Of course, this is no reflection on the work. It’s more an indication of my own wretched, shaky sense of self.

SWANBERG: Has it been good for your ego to be the star of a show?

BRONSTEIN: Yikes. That’s complicated. I mean, I feel like I’m always sort of careening wildly between states of extreme self-regard and abject self-doubt, with almost nothing in between to moderate it. It’s a very shaky system of checks and balances. On one hand it keeps me from being an insufferable asshole. But on the other, it sort of puts a cap on how much I can really revel in any positive attention I might get. I mean, I’ll have moments when I actually feel sort of cool and want to preen a bit but then *wham* the bottom drops out and I feel absolutely bankrupt and super embarrassed.

I don’t know. Like I said in answer to the last question, so far working with you has made me more self-conscious than anything else. But I’m willing to keeping trundling through the production, mostly cause I don’t want to be the kind of person who can’t do it. It’s sort of a counter-phobic thing. I mean, when I first saw Hannah Takes the Stairs, I remember thinking how the actors just seemed so comfortable and totally tapped into themselves, which I read as a sign of strength and self-possession. To say “no” to the project would be like acknowledging that I’m not strong or self-possessed enough to pull it off. So instead I said “yes” and now I’m forced to overcompensate…a lot. Shit, I think I’ve sort of lost the thread of the question. Next.

SWANBERG: Why do you get so stressed out sometimes?

BRONSTEIN: Good grief. I don’t know. Let’s ask Mary instead. She’s bound to provide a much more honest (read: incriminating) answer.

SWANBERG: Why do you think we have such similar taste in art and respond to the same things in people?

BRONSTEIN: Oh jeez. You know neither of us are really very creative people, Joe. I mean, I have filmmaker friends who walk around generating plot ideas all the time, but shit, when I walk down the street, all I do is brood about my friends and my loved ones and really zero in on all the attending barbs and snags and accrued resentments that seem to get in the way of closeness. I think you’re the same and so it’s only natural that we’d look for this in the art we seek out.

A big difference between us though is that you definitely have a much healthier ability and willingness to explore the positive elements of interpersonal dynamics too, things like amity and genuine regard and stuff. I’m a lot more prone to romanticize my own nitwit misanthropy and spend all day picking at the same scab.
SWANBERG: You have said that you don’t trust “alpha males” in the arts. Can you explain this?

BRONSTEIN: Heh. A pretty pinheaded generalization to be sure. I was probably just trying to be funny. But I don’t know. Art is sort of like this sneaky backdoor way to garner favor and approval from people who might otherwise reject you. If you’re handsome and gregarious enough to earn that kind of regard in real life, I’m not sure why or when you would have cultivated the kind of wayward point-of-view necessary to make something interesting. It all sounds like sour grapes, no? Fugget.