Even before its premiere, the debates over Mary Bronstein’s Yeast already began to simmer. The film intentionally dispenses with any sense of likability, crafting characters that are an embodiment of distasteful id rather than sympathetic figures to whom the viewer can relate. Karina talked with Bronstein and co-stars Greta Gerwig and Amy Judd about dissolving friendships, movies that don’t make you feel good, and cock punches.

Don’t miss Karina’s review of the film here.

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Yeast Interview

Karina Longworth: Mary, last night you were saying that you didn’t make this movie for everybody, and I kind of want to know, who do you think that the audience for this movie is?

Mary Bronstein: Well, when I said that I didn’t make the movie for everybody, I guess, you can only really make movies for people that have similar tastes as yours. What I like to see in a movie is something challenging. I like to go to the movie theater to have some sort of reaction, whether it be something that’s confronting me, some kind of material that is confronting me or challenging me in some way or making me feel something.

So, that’s really who I made this movie for, people that like to go to the movie theater and really be faced with something that they’re not faced with every day. The word “like” is not very useful, I don’t think, in terms of this movie or movies like it. I just hope that people get something out of it and have some sort of reaction, whether it’s positive or negative.

Karina: I think, what you said last night, or yesterday sometimes, about how the movie is kind of open to interpretation and that everyone who watches it is going to bring something personally to it and have their own kind of reaction. Because I think, there’s bits of everyone in the three characters and in the situations that they’re in. There’s going to be a lot of projection of their own issues or tastes.

Mary: I think, so too. And it’s a very uncomfortable subject matter for a lot of people. And so I think, it is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable, but hopefully, that won’t be a negative thing.

Karina: I agree.

Greta Gerwig: I think, also, because the characters are immensely distasteful, all of them, in different ways. Like whether one is too aggressive or the other is too passive, or somewhere in between. And I think, that alone, people are apt to say something like, “I hated all of them, so I don’t know what to attach to.”

But I don’t know, I’m kind of used to people hating movies that I do.

[laughter]

Karina: I’m really excited to have people see it and see what their reactions are, but I think that there’s going to be thing where people are like, “Well, I hated every moment of this movie, because it’s so unpleasant and because the characters are so unpleasant,” and that they won’t be able to see what’s interesting about is.

Amy Judd: Well, that’s their loss. I mean, they’ve just got to get past that.

Mary: That’s the thing. People go to movies for different reasons. People have different definitions of “enjoying” a movie. If you equate feeling good at the end of a movie with an enjoyable experience, then this is going to be a difficult movie for you. But, if that’s not something that’s important to you, then I think, it would be a great experience. I hope. I’m really curious to hear what people think about it.

Karina: So, as far as the collaboration process went with the three of you, what do you think that each of you sort of brought to the table?

Mary: Well, this movie is a total collaboration. I came up with the original idea, but all of the character work, Greta and Amy brought to it. So, this movie is only this movie because Greta and Amy are in it. And they can talk to, I guess, what they brought to it personally.

Greta: Yeah. Mary had actually acted in a play that I wrote about girls. And she came up with this idea about wanting to make a movie about the last time you ever hang out with somebody, and how you don’t necessarily know it’s the last time, but somewhere inside you, you do. And it’s awkward and it’s like, “Goodbye, we’re not friends any more.”

And so, she had that idea and so we started talking about it. And then, we kind of came up with this idea of a camping trip, because we thought it would be funny to make a buddy comedy where they weren’t buddies.

[laughter]

Greta: And then, she knew Amy from acting school in college, and she brought Amy into the mix. And then, Mary started putting this script together, and culling different ideas from people, and really took charge, hardcore. It was impressive.

And then, I don’t know, from my end of it, I kind of knew right off the bat the kind of character I wanted to play, exactly how I wanted her to function, the way she talked, who she was. I based it on somebody I knew. And I kind of like ran with it and I never deviated. I don’t know, it was kind of instantaneous, figuring that out and figuring out my place in it.

And it was kind of great, because I didn’t really know Amy at all. And in the movie we’re not supposed to know each other, so it made it very easy to appear awkward.

[laughter]

Karina: Right. You want to talk about your character?

Amy: Yeah. During the early process, I just decided that Mary and I had been friends since college and our friendship has had ups and down, of course, but luckily it’s survived. But, there’s been some really bad parts, and we kind of would talk about those and get some good ideas for awkwardness.

I kind of based my character on, looking back, the worst aspects of my personality at 18 years old, magnified to 100 billion degrees. And it was great when we were throwing around all these ideas during the process of writing it. I would come into work in the morning I live in Los Angeles I’d come into work in the morning and Mary would be online and would have already sent me the newest draft and I could go through it and be like, “Well, you know…”

And we’d bounce back ideas back and forth on Gmail chat and she’d leave and go home and write it all over again. It was just a really very exciting time.

Mary: I think that one of the things that was interesting to me about this subject was that most of the time in movies, whatever else is going on in the movie, the characters’ friendship or friend or whatever is the safe part of their life. And they kind of go back to that person and it’s a safety.

But in this movie, it’s the least safe thing. And I think, in real life, you don’t really have enemies, you have friends. And those are the people that bring you happiness and also cause you the most trouble emotionally. So, that’s really what we were trying to get at as well.

Greta: I have enemies. I have a list.

[laughter]

Mary: Well, I have a punch them in the face list.

Karina: Are you actually going to punch them in the face?

Greta: Hmm, yes, yes.

Karina: I have somebody at this film festival, that if I was introduced to that person, I would punch him in the face.

Greta: You would punch him in the face?

Karina: Yeah. Because I only know him on the Internet.

Amy: You want to Internet punch him.

Karina: It’s a long story. But, if somebody said, “Here, Karina, I want you to meet Person X,” I would need to be restrained.

Greta: Right. I heard the phrase “cockpunch” the other day, which was…

Karina: What does that mean?

Greta: I don’t know, but I was like, “That’s awesome.” So, I’ve been trying to drop it into conversations.

Karina: Does that mean that you actually punch somebody in the cock, or is that like a type of punch where it’s like, “You’re being a cock” if you punch somebody that way?

[laughter]

Greta: I think, it’s punching them in the cock, but usually when you think about groin injury, you think about kneeing somebody. Because you’d have to like move down and then punch them in the cock.

Mary: That would be awkward. It would be really complicated.

[laughter]

Karina: He could be standing up and you could be kneeling, but then in turns into, like, a sex thing, right?

Amy: If it was punching, like, a basketball player, it would be right at the right level.

Karina: Well, everybody in this movie needs a cockpunch at some point or another.

Mary: Yeah. Greta told me a story early on in the process about a friend that she had that actually randomly punched her one time.

Greta: Yeah, yeah.

Mary: And we just talked about how weird that is. And how, in everyday life, violence doesn’t really play a part. You’re not really walking around, I am afraid that you’re friends are going hate you. But, you are afraid… But, they are injuring you even other ways. So, we thought it would be interesting to bring that physical violence into it.

And as far as, like, in the movie, I realized… after being hit in the movie, that I’d never actually been hit before. [laughs] And it’s a really emotional thing. It’s a weird thing to have a person hit you.

Greta: Yeah. It was really scary, because I heard the sound of it. I heard the “thwap.”

Karina: You guys didn’t do any pussy stage fighting, like you actually hit each other.

Amy: You do have a scar.

Greta: I didn’t tell Mary that I was going to do it.

Mary: That’s right.

Greta: I just hit her hard on the back of the head and after the sound, I was like, “Oh, god, I really hit you. I’m sorry.”

Karina: What does that do to your relationship, just as real people? Playing a scene like that. Or just in the movie, in general, like having to be so brutal?

Amy: When we were batting the ideas back and forth, whenever we would come up with an idea that was reminiscent of something from Mary and I, our actual friendship, we’d be like, when we were writing it we were like, “I’m not still upset about that,” you know, reassuring ourselves.

But by the time, I got to actually filming, I don’t think any of the violence or anything did anything destructive to our friendship, in any way.

Greta: I would like to comment on the set design of the movie, which I took no part in, but it is amazing. The set design they did on Ronnie and Mary’s apartment, they transformed that shit.

Mary: It’s amazing.

Karina: She was telling me last night that it’s the same place they shot Butterknife.

Greta: Yes, it’s her apartment.

Mary: We turned the living room of our apartment into a studio apartment, basically. And Amy and I spent, like, two days decorating it.

Karina: I loved all the clippings on the walls, like the rock star photographs and stuff.

Amy: Buffy.

Mary: Buffy was very involved. It was just meant to be like, you do that when you’re in college, you tape stuff to your wall. You cut stuff out of magazines that you think is cool, and you think that whatever’s on your wall represents you. That’s you. If somebody comes into the room, you are on the wall. They know what you’re about.

But you stop doing that at some point. But, these girls haven’t. And that, I think, said something very important about the characters.

Karina: So much of this movie, I can’t imagine people actually living their lives that way. Not just being in a filthy room, but being surrounded by so many toxic forces and not having an outlet.

Amy: Exactly.

Mary: Yeah, I think, that’s really what it’s about, is being friends with people that are toxic for you, but why you keep being friends with them. It’s the same reason why people are in abusive romantic relationships.

Greta: They don’t know what else to do.

Mary: You can’t leave, you don’t know what to do. So, in a friendship, it becomes even more intense, because not a romantic relationship, so you don’t “break up.”

Karina: One of the things I thought was really interesting about the movie is that people treat each other so badly because they can. Kind of the way that you… sometimes like in family relationships, like you can push somebody to a point, because you know there can’t be any repercussions because they’re your brother or they’re your mom.

Mary: And the other thing is, actually when we watched it for the first time, afterwards we realized that if you filmed this movie with 10 year olds, it could essentially be the same movie. And that’s an element in it that I was really excited about too, that these people are just so stunted that these girls, the way that they deal with men is the same way they would deal with men when they were 12.

Like the whole scene in the river with me and Greta and the Safti brothers is, to me, like the pinnacle of what the movie is all about. It’s people that don’t know what the hell to do with each other.

Greta: I think that during the filming, my instinct was and I think, your instinct was a little bit it’s like have some nice moment or have some moment of connection so that it could change the tone up a little bit to lead you into the next thing.

And it was really hard to stay away from that when we were filming. Having Ronnie and Mary be like, “No, stay away from that. Don’t do that. We don’t have any nice moments. That’s not what this movie is about. We don’t want any point where it seems like there might be a reconciliation.” It’s like nails on a chalkboard the entire time.

And it’s hard to keep that up. You want that to have a breathing room.

Karina: But, that scene in the river does seem like the nicest moment between the two of you. Just because it ends up being you guys versus them, like girls against boys.

Amy: For a second they can forget their differences, since they’re being horrible to somebody else.

Greta: Exactly. They unite based on that.

Mary: The only moment of joy that my character has in the whole movie is when she’s buried the shoes of the boy and is jumping up and down on them. It’s sheer joy. And then, it’s gone.

Karina: In the other interview I did with you, you were saying you didn’t think the movie was going to be as funny as it is.

Mary: Right.

Karina: I laughed throughout the entire thing. I think, it’s kind of riotously funny, but funny in this way where it’s like you can’t… some of it’s shocked laughter. You can’t believe that people are actually doing things. But, then some of it seems like jokes.

Mary: Yeah.

Karina: And I wonder how much of it was like intentional comedy.

Mary: I intended for there to be humor in the movie, but I think that I didn’t intend for it to be so funny. But, I think that just the situations that were created, like you said, they’re so absurd.

Amy: Ludicrous.

Mary: They’re absurd. It’s not a study in realism. It’s very heightened subject matter and acting and material. And so, a lot of it comes off as really absurd. And I think that just when were in the moments, like my character doesn’t think that anything that’s going on is funny, so sometimes, I lost sight of what was happening that was funny. And then, I watched it back and saw myself doing something that was funny.

But in the moment, I didn’t realize it. And I think, also bringing in the men, a lot of the funniest moments, I think, are with the men.