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Burma – SXSW: Writer / Director Carlos Puga

By Meredith Alloway · March 21, 2013

It’s hard to believe Burma is Carlos’ feature film debut. Intriguing and introspective, the film delivers an intricate story by an enlightening cast. Puga landed them the Ensemble Award at SXSW this year. Working on True Life for MTV for over 10 years, Puga brings his eye for realistic dialogue and human interaction to his narrative feature.

Carlos gave me call from Chile, where he’s taking some time to visit family. We just had time to hit the tip of the iceberg, discussing the way he constructed his characters, cast Christopher Abbott [Girls] and how he becomes a hermit when working on his latest script.

ATW: Burma centers on Christian, a struggling young writer. What’s been your own personal journey as a screenwriter? How did you get started?

P: The thing is Burma is my first feature. I’d been writing scripts since college, but I never got stuck to anything. I kept putting it off until my short film Satan Since 2003 was in Sundance in 2011. After that, I thought I would put something together. I wanted to finish one of my scripts and start shooting it. I took a couple pieces from different ones, character wise, and started Burma. I wanted something that, A) I could make it; B) And be proud of.

ATW: Where did the idea for Burma begin? Did it stem from this compilation of characters from your various scripts?

P: It’s purely fiction, it being the first real script that I’ve made there’s some autobiographical stuff: he’s a writer, I’m a middle child. But I had no major family traumas, my mom didn’t’ die or anything. [Christian’s] character had appeared in a couple things I had written; I’ve been working on a book for 10 years. He’s not that likeable, and he’s self loathing. For the sister [Susan; Gaby Hoffmann], I have an older sister. She has a family and took a more familiar path as well. I do have a younger brother who’s also an actor, so there’s the two of us; there are some similarities there. After I had the main idea for the script, I just started hyperbolizing certain aspects.

ATW: Why cast Christopher? He really brings an angsty but also stoic voice to the character!

P: We were friends before; I had met him through Brady [Corbet]. We went to go see him in The House of Blue Leaves. He starts the second act with a 10-minute monologue. I had never seen an audience so captivated, it was more the silences that got you entranced in what he was doing. I started crafting the script to more his style, based a lot in silences. Chris can hold your attention with that silence; very few people can do that on film. He’s giving so much subtext to everything without opening his mouth.

ATW: I think we all relate to Christian because he’s somewhat of a masochist. He’s constantly stunting his own growth in a way. To you, where is this fear of moving forward coming from?

P: I’m a pretty self-critical person. In a Meta sort of way, the movie took so long to get made too. I didn’t sort of jump; it took me a long time to realize that a moment of actual action is worth an eternity of waiting or preparation. In that way, [Christian’s] sort of putting things off because he’s afraid of failure. He’s sort of a perfectionist.

ATW: This definitely relates to why he’s been writing about his mother for 5 years and nothing’s really come of it.

P: Writing about his mom is just more just like ‘this is something that I’ve seen in narratives before, where this is very dramatic, this is interesting.’ It’s the most impactful part of his life, and therefore made the most sense to write about that. To me, he shouldn’t be writing about that, he should be making up some fictional tale he knows nothing about.

ATW: Dr. Lynn [Christopher McCann] is an intricate, mysterious character. How did you construct him?

P: A lot of it was in editing certain lines. I tried to withhold information as part of the narrative, to create a sort of mystery. I wanted the audience to give him a chance at first, to like him. Chris McCann does a neutral take, maybe a little quirkier, not dislikable at first. The audience members then find out things he did and think how do I reconcile things later about what he did with his kids. He crosses the line between good and bad the whole way through.

ATW: You worked on True Life for MTV. What aspects of that show did you bring to Burma?

P: I worked on it for 10 years. Mostly when you’re shooting, it’s a documentary format, you’re waiting for these special moments, and you’re ready to capture them on film. In the process of doing that for 10 years, you’re honed in to conversations and you know something is about to happen because they are speaking this certain way. There are certain speech patterns and human dynamics. There’s also the shooting style. Tom Richmond [Burma’s DP] lit scenes so that the camera could roam. You could shoot from all around, and you didn’t’ have to stop to change set ups.

ATW: Did you feel working on your own film you had more freedom? Where did you exercise it?

P: I feel like for True Life. When you’re out in the field, you’re kind of a one-man crew. I was used to doing a very one-man operation, and so coming to a movie, the best part was the collaboration. I wasn’t used to collaborating with people. The script came alive and became much better. Gaby and Chris give it so much more context than you ever thought possible. At first, I found the crew constricting, but it’s part of being on a film crew ‘hurry up and wait.’

ATW: You all have put together a wonderful group of filmmakers! How did you meet Brady Corbet?

P: Brady and I have been best friends for 7 years. We were both living in LA and met through Joseph Gordon-Levitt who did Mysterious Skin with Brady. We instantly clicked. I kind of missed New York, and I was in LA for 5 years doing True Life. Brady had an offer to do Funny Games with Michael Haneke, and we moved to New York together. He met up with Antonio [Campos] and became friends with them, and that’s where I met Antonio and Josh Mond and Sean Durkin. New York is a tighter nit indie community. It’s nice to have these guys to call when you have questions about production.

ATW: Tell me about your writing nest?

P: For me, the best writing I do isn’t over a long span of time. I have to sit down and immerse myself for a couple weeks without doing anything else. Sometimes I go away for a couple weeks, and I’m by myself. I do a lot of bad writing at first; I get that out of the way. For me, it’s very solitary. Sometimes I don’t move out of my bed, my laptop on my lap. I don’t do well going to a café and getting external input.

Carlos, when he’s not taking a break to surf the Chile Sea, is working on a new script with E. McCabe Walsh, who also helped produced Burma. Not ready to disclose any inside information, I said I’d be waiting once the script is complete! He’s got a new episode of True Life that will air this summer and hoping his this new feature can start production later this year.