Zia Anger’s name has not broken into the mainstream; it’s instead been a kind of totem for underground film artistry, to whatever extent that even exists anymore. Her presentation-based My First Film earned traction as the ultimate vision / confession of artistic failure and regret, making somewhat peculiar the existence of My First Film, a feature debut-of-sorts that details her younger self’s failure to launch a filmmaking career. Or someone like her: the lead character is Vita, a shortsighted and temperamental young director failing to control cast, crew, ideas, or impulses; but present in the film, too, is Zia, who reflects on this difficult time in the character’s (her?) life.
Fear not any risk of complication. Conceptually fluid and nimbly assembled, My First Film makes legible––dare I say universal?––thwarted dreams and personal embarrassment vis-à-vis its interplay of Anger’s actual work and Vita’s staged endeavors. It was accordingly a pleasure to speak with the filmmaker about shaping a project I only hope is the at-long-last emergence of a produced-and-distributed talent.
The Film Stage: You’ve worked in avenues that are a bit more specialized and don’t engender traditional press. So you having a movie that’s actually, say, released in theaters by a big distributor…
Zia Anger: [Laughs] That is the best way to put it, Nick.
…makes it much easier.
Yeah. Hilarious. I’m honestly glad to be here and getting to talk about my work. It’s thrilling.
No chip on the shoulder. No complex about or fears of selling out. MUBI is a good company to have push you into the real world.
Yeah, totally. [Laughs]
This feels like the most promotional work you’ve done for a project.
Yeah.
How has it been, that talking-about process?
The film says so much of what I needed to say, right? I mean, I am somebody that can talk forever so of course I will say more about it. But I think the film is so much the thesis of what I needed to say that getting out in front of it and talking about it is, like, something that I’m still… figuring out how to do. Which is so meta, so me. But I am honestly just so proud of it and so excited that people are going to see a finished feature film of mine that, like, I’ll do all the things I need to do to make sure that people see it. And this is not because it is self-serving or about me; I am just thrilled with what my collaborators did. I cannot tell you. Every time I think about it or I get to see some of it or I watch it again I’m like, “These people are amazing!”
I know that I wrote it; I know I directed it. But really, when I think about it, is it such a collaborative effort and this stuff that really is resonating with people––it’s so, so beyond me. And that is exciting because I’ve been making promises to people for 15 years that I was going to make something with them and people are going to see it. So for that to happen is really, really exciting. For that to happen now, when some of my collaborators are this developed, this established: Ashley Connor, who shot it, who also shot the first film; the editor, Joe Bini, who’s totally legendary. Getting to work with them and people seeing them operate at what I would say is the top of what they do is really exciting.
The online, more conceptual version had a certain type it attracted. A whisper network, kind of.
Yeah.
Whereas this has theatrical engagements and all that comes with it. Have you made much of the wider berth of responses, or is that nothing to worry about?
The performance was really amazing because it was that whisper network. And also, like, who is gonna go. If you’re like, “There’s a performance in a theater or online that you should see,” that is incredibly self-selecting. Most people are not like, “Yeah, I’m gonna see a performance piece.” Like, they’re just not. That’s not it. A film is really interesting because, all of a sudden, you can get any number of people watching it, but the difference between a performance and a film is like: a performance is ever-evolving, and a film––despite what the film says about it not ending––it’s done. Like, I’m not reopening the edit. I don’t even think legally I could do that. Ever. [Laughs] So I really have decided to not check in with what people are feeling about the film.
I am open––deeply open––to critique and engagement and talking about stuff, and I have had that with friends and people I really trust; and also I don’t want to drive myself crazy by thinking that I can change something that I can’t. Or trying to explain something that, already, I stand deeply behind, in terms of the explanations that the film gives. I think it speaks for itself in that way, so I’ve decided to let all that stuff go. Besides the fact that I want as many people as possible to see it. For that reason I’m like, “Sure, let’s talk about it! Let’s do it!”
Every filmmaker friend who looks at the Letterboxd for their movie––I just don’t understand that level of masochism.
Yeah. I would look at reviews and Letterboxd stuff for the performance because the performance was evolving and I wanted to see, in real time, this feedback, and making the film, I was really, really open to feedback. We did so many test screenings; I shared the script; I shared all the cuts with people. I am somebody that loves feedback; I love criticism. I want it again, again, again. It’s gonna lead me to where I want to go––I know that––but the thing I did that was really healthy was totally fucking log off. I did that when I knew that I was gonna shoot the film. Actually, I did that, probably, when we were looking for financing. No more tweeting. No more checking on myself and riling myself up about my career. Like, no more engaging online because I honestly just felt like the scroll was a huge waste of my energy.
I have all this creative energy and the last thing I want to do is just tweet it out. So I really tried to stay on that because now I know how. I just want to protect that creative energy; I don’t want to waste it online, as much as I love being online. Like, don’t get me wrong: I’m on Vanderpump Rules Reddit all the time, scrolling. [Laughs] But I am not on Twitter tweeting about myself. Or reading my Letterboxd reviews or anything like that. Because it feels really wasteful, in terms of what energy I do have.
You’ll know you made it when you see your name on the Vanderpump Rules Reddit.
Literally.
That’s breaking containment.
Yeah, exactly. [Laughs]
I also had a kind of interactive experience with the movie––my name would show up in the dead-center of the screener every five minutes, including during the sex scene, where my name appeared in her agape mouth.
[Laughs] Oh, my God.
Then “Property of MUBI” showing up over the shot of the Plan B bag. Which seemed like a conceptual gesture.
Yeah. [Laughs]
Around the middle of the movie––the “center,” for purposes of this question––it reaches a kind of fever pitch of past tense / present tense / film-within-film / production of film-within-film that got me thinking about the editorial shape. You and the editors are said to have centered on its shape in the edit. I wonder if there were versions that were more radical, or versions more linear and legible, that you pulled back from.
I kind of came into it saying, “I think there’s a language in this film that we teach the audience throughout the film.” I worked with two editors, Matt Hannam and Joe Bini, and Joe sat down and he really showed me what editors do. In the most humbling way possible where this film would be nothing without him. Like, this film––as written––did not make sense. Or it would’ve been far more difficult to follow without him. So he really showed me this idea of, “Let’s just develop a language throughout it and the audience will get it.” And I think you’re right: like halfway through there becomes this fever pitch where you kind of realize, as an audience member, you’re within the language of this film and you’re kind of seeing all the levels but you don’t really quite know where it’s going yet. I don’t know if that was your experience, but that was kind of the hope. I think the big thing, for me, really when it came to editing it was: I have so many ideas and these ideas are so complicated and this film is dealing with so many things that have been boiling up inside me for so, so long that there was a lot of tangents the film went on that actually did not serve the ultimate ideas and feelings of the film.
So, if anything, earlier cuts were a lot more disparate; earlier cuts had a lot more places that they went that felt more experimental or… I don’t know, if anything, less flat. What we did was––because of all this feedback that I was allowing it and getting––what we really, really did was say, “Why are we getting feedback on this part?” We’d realize it was because people just didn’t understand why we were going there. And a lot of times I’d be like, “You know, that does feel like a different film.” [Laughs] So a lot of the thing that ended up happening was clarifying that language of the film that we spent the first-third really developing and clarifying––clarifying the themes of the film and ultimately moving forward in terms of thought rather than into, literally, other films. So moving deeper into the poetry rather than heading to a new poem.
I didn’t know Odessa Young’s work that well before this film, though I saw her onstage last year and she was very impressive. There are the practical realities of how casts are assembled: sometimes it’s the person you want; sometimes you’re introduced to someone by a producer or agent; sometimes they’re pushed onto you by a producer or agent. What was the inroad with her? And how ready was she to play you vs. how much she had to be tailored?
The character of Vita, as crazy as it sounds, I did not think that I was ever writing about myself. It was a really easy character to write about because I knew the backstory, I knew what had happened to her, I knew all of her feelings. But I was not sitting there being like, “Here is this version of myself.” And then when we began to think about casting, you know, I’m looking at a huge list of actors that maybe one would be able to find financing because of. I’m watching a lot of different movies that people are in. With this-sized film, actors of Odessa’s status are not necessarily auditioning for a film like mine. They’re getting sent an offer; they’re getting asked to meet with a director. I watched so many different actors and was kind of trying to think about who it could be and all of that. My producer, Taylor Shung, was friendly with Odessa and kind of kept being like, “But what about Odessa? What about Odessa? What about Odessa?” “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.”
I started to watch the stuff that she was in and started to think about the character of Vita, and I was like––Odessa is incredible and leaves a massive impression, but almost is like a shape-shifter. From role to role, she doesn’t look like… you don’t think, “Oh, that’s Odessa Young.” You’re just like, “Whoever is playing that character fucked that entire cast up. She just shook everybody to their core.” Each time she would do that and I would kind of be like, “Wow. Is that the same person?” So with the character Vita, what I knew about her from a directing standpoint was: I had to cast someone you couldn’t recognize. Because the moment you recognized her, the story was over. Like, this is about a filmmaker that nobody knows. She’s never made it. And also, she is somebody that leaves a massive impression.
From my perspective, I hate her. Like, I hate her. But also: I want her to be lovable. I want there to be something there that audiences connect with and say, “Well, if I could love that part of me, I would.” Odessa kind of checked all those boxes and it became very clear that she was the person, if she was to say yes, would probably do an amazing job at this. Like, if there was ever gonna be a good version of this film, she would be cast as the lead in it. And yeah: luckily, she wanted to do it and did it fully. She just threw herself, like, completely into it. You watch it and you’re just like, “There she goes!” It was exciting to give an actor a role like that because there’s not a lot of roles like that for young women that just let them go all the way.
As someone who spends too much time on devices, seeing the early-2010s iPhone and Mac and Facebook interfaces in this movie was kind of startling. They feel significant to suggest a time and place, what we ingest, how we see the world. I’m curious a) on a practical level, how you put them onscreen, but also b) what they mean to you for time and place you evoke.
Practically speaking, we worked a lot with Stephen Phelps, who’s the production designer. I understood stuff that happened in the past, I wanted to be shot practically. Like, yeah, we can shoot it straight-on, but I want to do it practically. I want the text message to actually be a text message on the phone. I wanted the Mac that she was using to not be the digital… I wanted to film that. I wanted the keyboard to click and clack in that way. I wanted the mouse to do it that way. And everything that was happening present-day, I knew I wanted it to be a screen capture so that it felt like you, the viewer, could technically be the person that’s typing these things out. It would be that flat, that front-and-center with you.
That was just a way to establish the different times we were in that I thought was really good. Like, one was this memory of it; the other was straight-up like, “This is what’s happening right now, in front of you.” But for me, I think that what I really, really was interested in with these digital interfaces, emotionally, was how this thing in the past––like Facebook––that felt so… I mean, it’s haunting, right?
Absolutely.
It haunts you in present day. Going through and scrolling through and seeing somebody poke somebody else or like somebody else or say that they were with somebody honestly made me crazy. It really felt like, before the word “FOMO” existed, FOMO. “I am missing out on everything. My boyfriend has another girlfriend!” There was just so much more texture back then to the feeling that these interfaces evoked. There was so much more. It felt so much more three-dimensional, and now, because these interfaces are so embedded in our everyday life, we’re sitting here and scrolling and hours go by.
It feels like there’s less texture to them. It feels like there’s less time related to them, and in fact they’re just killing our time rather than, like, the novelty of the taste and the feeling of what that time was. So taking practical and then making emotional––they make sense together. The clacks of the keyboard especially in those old scenes, to me, are very important. Because it feels like I’m writing a really nasty email to somebody that I… you know, I’ve gotten better at not doing that! I don’t do that in the present day anymore because I have learned to temper that part of myself.
It struck me in a slightly mortifying way.
It’s totally mortifying.
You’ve talked about doing a new feature. How do you see yourself approaching that? Are you now better-equipped, or is it just like starting over?
I feel both ways. I feel like doing something that literally personal is something that… I need more experiences in my life to do something that personal. Choosing something beyond that is a little bit daunting. The idea of meeting characters outside of my world and understanding them personally is incredibly daunting. From an emotional level it’s difficult to imagine but also really exciting; from a really practical level I feel more well-equipped than ever. I know now what I like to direct. I now have a lot of different tools. I have a really, really developed process. I understand better what editing is; therefore I understand better what writing should be to help myself not fuck up so much that you need the editor.
So ultimately I’m really, really excited, and I always treated My First Film like it could be the last film I ever made. I knew that that was a possibility because of the first one. “I am going to just really enjoy this process because this could be the last time I do it. I’m never going to take this for granted again.” I still am deeply humbled by that experience and understand I could never make something again and also now, more than ever, am like “I want to make something again.” I really love making films again and I love the process. Just really, really excited by the prospect of that.
My First Film enters a limited release on Friday, August 30, and begins streaming on MUBI Friday, September 6.