Sequin Raze: Writer/Director Sarah Gertrude Shapiro

It’s become America’s all-too accessible guilty pleasure: Reality TV. In Sarah Gertrude Shapiro’s latest short, Sequin Raze, she goes behind the scenes and behind all the bullshit. Anna Camp stars as Jessica, the “loser” contestant on a Bachelor-identical TV show. But she can’t go home until she gives the camera one last interview. PA Rebecca, played by a captivating Ashley Williams, manipulates Jessica into “letting the world love” her and giving the audience exactly what they want to see: the “truth.”

ATW: Sequin Raze is about the Reality TV world. How much of this was taken from personal experience?

SHAPRIO: Legally, I can’t really say. Off the record…maybe a lot. It was very much inspired by that time in my life. Basically, it’s a lot about what happened for me. As I was writing the script, I came to see more layers in it. It’s exploring themes that I explore in all of my work. But it’s definitely based on a specific moment that happened to me on set.

ATW: Looking at your other shorts Jelly and Hot Tub, they're very experimental and avant-garde. Sequin Raze is definitely more mainstream. What made you make this transition? Was this evolution necessary to tell the story?

SHAPIRO: I think for me, narrative filmmaking is where I want to be. It’s so much harder to do that well than documentary work or experimental. My short Second Best is a conversation between a couple coming home from Ikea. They’re exhausted and hungry. They were a real couple I knew. Everything was scripted but they weren’t actors. I feel like my mainstream move was influenced by working with great actors. I have tons of respect for actors! I come from a really art and experimental background, but sometimes I feel like we hide in that. Oh you didn’t get it? Oh well. My cinematographer [Ava Berkovsky] came from an art-based background too. We developed a visual language that felt refined but also very physical. With Sequin Raze, it was important the camera was close to the actors, and we wanted to get a feel for their body.

ATW: Where did this all begin? How did you get into filmmaking?

SHAPIRO: There’s a little school called the Northwest Film Center, a tiny film school in Portland.  Miranda July went there, she also helped out with the short.  I also went to Sarah Lawrence and studied writing there. Their film program is very experimental. I always had this problem that my films were too conventional. They’d say, ‘Why aren’t you peeing on the film?!’  I focused a lot there on screenwriting

ATW: I definitely felt like, similar to your other shorts, Sequin Raze, is still very open to interpretation. Did you know you wanted to make the film about female manipulation and power play and build the characters on top of that, or the other way around?

SHAPIRO: It was the former. Female power is everything I care about. It’s in everything I do. [The short] was about what destroying other women does to you. There are so many layers with this, because it’s so personal. But I feel like the audiences at home suffer an impact as well by experiencing dehumanization of females on TV. It’s so addictive to rate them: she’s fat and she’s old and she’s ugly. I still think it when I watch those shows! I’m hyper aware of it. But what does that mean about us? We’re at home 30 pounds overweight and eating pizza on the couch.

ATW: Anna and Ashley are tremendous. How did you go about locking them into the script? What was casting like?

SHAPIRO: I actually wrote the part of Jessica for Anna, but I didn’t think I was going to get her…at all. Five overnights for free? She had no reason to do it! I wrote her this crazy-stalker-fan email; I can’t believe I actually sent it! But someone finally was like, I know her agent. In the email I said, “I know everyone thinks you’re just a pretty face, but I know there’s darkness in you.” I think she connected to that. She really liked the script. And then Francis Conroy [who plays psychologist Dr. Wagerstein] is like a Tony, Emmy winning actress; she has beyond no reason to do it! But I just sent her the script. They all really responded to the script. With Rebecca, I couldn’t figure out how to cast the role.

ATW: You’re casting yourself!

SHAPIRO: Yea! I had to try and not cast the skinner, hotter actress version of myself! I wanted someone bigger. The first person we auditioned was probably 300 pounds. But it got way too cartoon-y. It looked like the ogre attacking the princess. But I was also navigating the process of casting myself. It came down to getting the very best actor. When I met with Ashley, it was before I locked in Anna. I told her she could have either role, and she wanted Rebecca.

ATW:  What was the set life like? Because the short is about set life, did it make everyone hyper aware of their working environment?

SHAPIRO: It was insane! Everyone was working for free! I got in a car accident because I fell asleep at the wheel! It was crazy. I don’t think the material we were shooting made anyone more sweet to each other, though. But everyone was definitely passionate about the material.

ATW: Tell me about your role in directing the first scene where Rebecca tries to get Jessica to give her last interview. How did you go about creating such intense emotion and stakes there?

SHAPIRO: The main thing was that they are both highly trained actors. I let them take a pass at it first.  It was more cheesy and funny. Because they’re both used to being on set and moving efficiently, I had to ask them to trust me a lot and to slow way down. Almost to the point they thought it was insane. But they were there working for free, they just said, we might as well. It was about making the scene heavier and more cumbersome. With Ashley, it was so much about exploring the internal life of that character. There are so many psychological turns that are silent. And then there are moments that were 100% from them.

ATW: What are some of those moments?

SHAPIRO:  When Rebecca takes out her earpiece. It was in the script, but she added this physical part that was so incredible. There’s another one that ended up being the punch line of the film. When Rebecca’s talking to Jessica and says, “Eat.” [Ashley] was spot on. With Anna, the whole performance on ‘Tell me how much I weigh right now.’ That was 100% inside of her; she just brought that.

ATW: The ending is somewhat grim. Are you saying it’s always a battle and you just have to learn to fight it? Or is Ashley the villain for you?

SHAPIRO: The interesting thing is that there was a different ending to the film. I found this one in the edit. The ending that was scripted made us have more sympathy for Rebecca. What happened, which I’m so in love with, is that I never know what side people will take. Most people in production take Rebecca’s side. But some people think she’s a horrible bitch, other’s, poor girl she’s just trying to do her job. But I wanted it to be violently ambiguous.

ATW: What’s the story behind the shirt Rebecca wears in the last scene? It’s fantastic!

SHAPIRO: I wanted to find a way to represent her feminism. But it’s so worn out and it’s from a by-gone era; with George Bush and all. It’s sort of that she’s carrying around a badge of her youth. I made it with a costume designer. I was obsessed with it being worn out in just the right way. But the image always felt familiar; maybe it was a shirt or bumper I had in high school.

ATW: There’s so much metaphor with food in the film. I need to keep my job so I can literally feed myself with pizza. Jelly is also about this fixation. Is this an important subject to you?

SHAPIRO: I’m obsessed with food. I think it’s a lot about access to pleasure and also nourishment. I think what’s interesting to me is that Jessica has access to the power of being hot. Which means more successful in work, dating. She’s a more “viable specimen.” She has control by starving herself. Rebecca is really hurting herself with food. I wanted to go with a bigger actress; I kept telling Ashley, You’re too pretty! But Rebecca’s in a safety bubble behind the camera. No one can see me or judge me. She has the power of her intellect, of invisibility. They’re both finding power in food but in different ways.

ATW: Here’s a question I always love asking! Do you have a particular writing nest or place where you go to work?

SHAPIRO: I go to a cabin where there’s no phone. Nature is a big part of it. I’ve been doing it lately in a cabin with a little garden. It’s about dissociating yourself from concerns or the list in your head of all the crap you have to do. I just don’t want any outside input.

ATW: Sequin Raze opens at SXSW this coming weekend! So what are your hopes for the short and what's next for you?

SHAPRIO: I have a feature in development. It’s Girls meets Devil Wears Prada. It’s a knarly look at a girl working in fashion in New York. With Sequin Raze, I really want to make it as a feature. But I also think the structure works as a TV show, with the structure revolving around each episode. I’m writing a pilot script for it.

ATW: I felt like while watching the short, I was watching the climax scene of an entire movie, which now I want to see!

SHAPIRO: Yes, I felt that way too! Now I want to write the characters, everyone, to write the world.

Sequin Raze premieres at SXSW March 9^th at the Topher Theater!