Yeast [trailer]

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Welcome to the first of many posts that we’ll be doing over the next couple of weeks, previewing upcoming SXSW premieres and profiling their makers. I’m so excited to start this plug fest with the work of a good friend of Spout, Mary Bronstein’s Yeast. Mary is featured in the webseries Butterknife, and she also starred in her husband Ronnie Bronstein’s debut feature, Frownland (which, incidentally, will be running for a week at the IFC Center in New York concurrent with Yeast’s debut in Austin).

Mary stars again in Yeast, alongside Greta Gerwig (Hannah Takes the Stairs), and together they explore friendships that are, according to the SXSW synopsis, “Ebola-infested, maggot-filled and bursting at the seams.” You can watch the trailer for Yeast above. Below, check out Mary’s answers to the 4 Questions We’re Asking Everybody (heretofore known as the 4QWAE). Yeast, which is screening in the Narrative Competition at SXSW, premieres at 7pm on Monday, March 10 at the Alamo Ritz; for more information, go here.

Tell us about your movie. Who did you work with, why did you make it? Give us the reductive, 25-word or less, “It’s like [pop culture reference a] meets [pop culture reference b]!” pitch, then explain what the quick and dirty sell leaves out.

“It’s like Laverne and Shirley meets Mike Leigh’s Nuts in May…on PCP!!”

Sorry…here’s the real 25 word-or-less: Yeast is a film about a maddeningly oblivious, tyrannical and stunted young woman trying to negotiate two toxic friendships.

Something that the synopsis doesn’t say is that Yeast turned out to be a lot funnier than I had originally anticipated. Another thing to know is that it isn’t a study in realism, or the way people “really” behave. It is more hyper-realism. We were interested in telling the story from the inside-out. Showing on the outside what the character is feeling on the outside. I find this more interesting than dialog about how characters feel. For example, sometimes you may be so frustrated at someone you wish you could just hit that person in the face. In real life you don’t, but you might say “You know, you are like, kind of being a little bit annoying right now.” In this movie you would actually hit the person.

I decided to make this film after I realized that I didn’t want to wait around for other people to make projects. I wanted to make a film about female friendships that dealt with the issues of resentment, hostility and emotional manipulation that often are present in too-close enmeshed friendships of either sex. I wanted to make a film about women that I’ve never seen before, about people who have no business being friends with each other but don’t know how to stop. And I wanted to see if I could pull it off.

I worked with an amazing combination of old friends and brand new friends that I met on the festival circuit. The film started when I approached Greta Gerwig about making a movie about the last time two best friends see each other. I then combined that story with another story I had about two emotionally estranged roommates and recruited my close friend of almost 10 years, Amy Judd. I wrote a skeleton script and then sent it to both Greta and Amy who made additions and then sent it back to me to make a master script. But then…we didn’t actually use the script as anything more than a tightly worked out outline, fleshing out the details regarding dialog on the set. My husband, director Ronald Bronstein generously agreed to pick up all my shortcomings on the set by assistant directing and Marc Raybin produced. Sean Williams, Michael Tully, Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie, Ignacio Carballo, Sam Lisenco (all talented filmmakers in their own rights) and David Sandholm round out the awesomely talented group I was lucky enough to work with. The process was truly collaborative in every sense of the word. Guess what? I don’t care what anyone says, it is impossible to direct yourself. Impossible…!
Do you have a day job/a non-filmmaking occupation that raises money for your filmmaking efforts? Tell us about it.

In my early 20s I ran away from acting straight to graduate school. I studied child psychology and child life, which is the practice of working therapeutically with physically ill children using play and art-based techniques. I have been working for several years in this field in several hospitals in New York City. I now run my own program on a pediatric floor in a small hospital in upper Manhattan. Guess what? No one knows about my secret life in film! The closest I got to being found out was when I mistakenly printed out a draft of a play by Greta Gerwig to the printer at the nurses’ station. It had a curse word on the first page and was the talk of the unit for weeks. Luckily, the kids never found out.

Have you been to SXSW before? If so, tell us about your funniest story from the experience. If not, what are you looking forward to re: the festival and/or the city of Austin?

Last year was my first time at SXSW, in support of my husband Ronald Bronstein’s film Frownland. It was a massive amount of fun. We met so many people…most of whom I recruited to help make Yeast. Ours lives are pretty different as a result of going. One funny thing: immediately following the last screening of Frownland, my husband got his foot wordlessly run-over by an influential blogger in a wheelchair being wheeled around by a mysterious man in a kilt who shall remain nameless.

Let’s get hypothetical: You’re on death row. The night of your execution, you’re allowed to watch any two films of your choice. What would you pick for your last-night-on-Earth double feature?

Wow. Is this in replace of, or in addition to, a last meal? Because I might actually like food more than I like movies. Either way, in my little cell awaiting death for my horrible crime, I would order up Wanda (Barbara Loden) and Don’t Look Back (DA Pennebaker). Then, I would cheat by laying back and replaying Frownland (Ronald Bronstein) in my head.