- Getty Images
- Left to right, director Lynn Shelton, actress Rosemarie DeWitt and actress Emily Blunt on January 21, 2012 in Park City, Utah.
Lynn Shelton didn’t make her first movie until she was nearly 40 years old. But in the seven years since, the Seattle-based director has churned out a series of emotionally engaging projects for both film and television.
Shelton’s latest feature, “Your Sister’s Sister,” is a comedic drama that stars actor Mark Duplass as a man haunted by his brother’s death. To help him through a particularly rough patch, his best friend (played by Emily Blunt) invites him to her family’s island retreat, not knowing that her lesbian sister (Rosemarie DeWitt) is staying there as well.
Shelton says she feels lucky that her cinematic interests revolve around interpersonal dynamics, because it makes her job easier in today’s independent film scene.
“I don’t care about explosions and blood effects and sci-fi green screens or whatever; I just want to put a microscope on two or three people, or sometimes more, and explore the relationships between human beings,” Shelton says. “This means I can literally pick up a camera and get a group of my friends together and go make a movie any time I want.”
Speakeasy spoke to Shelton about making “Your Sister’s Sister,” which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival last year and comes out in limited release June 15.
Speakeasy: You’re known for maintaining a very improvisation-heavy set and giving actors in your movies sketched-out outlines, rather than finished scripts, to work from. Is it difficult to convince an actor like Emily Blunt, who typically works from finished scripts, to let go and embrace improv?
Lynn Shelton: I think Emily came to “My Sister’s Sister” because she was interested in my filmmaking experience, which I described to her as being very, very collaborative and something where her input would be extremely essential. It really feels like film camp, or the polar opposite of working on a giant huge studio production. I mean, “Your Sister’s Sister” was a very intimate set but also a very intimate living situation. We were all living in these little houses right next to each other and walking over to the picture house every day and eating beautiful home-cooked meals every night and sharing campfires.
In addition to directing “Your Sister’s Sister,” you also have a cameo in the new indie release “Safety Not Guaranteed” – which stars Mark Duplass. Not a coincidence, I’m guessing.
Mark was one of the producers on that film and was the one to bring it to Seattle. They shot it up here with an expanded version of my typical crew. Being an on-set junkie, I leapt at the chance after Mel [Eslyn], who was the first assistant director, called and asked if I wanted that part.
Having directed episodes of the television shows “Mad Men” and “New Girl,” how do you like TV directing versus film directing?
Directing television is another opportunity just to direct, period. I love being on set and can’t get on set often enough. The shortest amount of time between my feature films has been about 14 months and it’s just way too much time between projects. TV directing is also really exhilarating because I get to work with a whole new crew; for my films, I always work with the same people in Seattle. I love them, but sometimes it’s nice to work with actors that I didn’t cast myself – I like being able to direct without having the entire creative vision be in my hands and just fulfill somebody else’s vision, like Matthew Weiner’s on “Mad Men.”
Would you ever want to direct a studio film?
I want to keep making movies and exploring different challenges, and if some of [my movies] are more commercial than others, that’s fine with me. The film that I just wrapped, “Touchy Feely” is an example of a film that is a departure from the last three films I made, which were all basically three-character chamber pieces with one location and this new film has an ensemble cast and multiple story lines.
In the end, I just care about making work that I can be proud of. It’s a very hard long process to make a movie and I don’t want to spend a year and a half, two years of my life on a film that I don’t really feel passionate about. I came to filmmaking kind of late in my life –I was almost 40 — and it might be different if I was 22 or 25. Then I might be willing to be like, “Yeah, I’ll do a ‘Transformers 5’ or whatever.” But I’m just not there. I’m not adverse to do something with more toys and more money, but I also want to make sure that it’s a good fit and the story is really something I can get behind.
For the latest entertainment news Follow @WSJSpeakeasy