The idiosyncratic “A Few Activities,” by Abigail Horton, collects a series of vignettes from life, like a father asking his daughter how to leave an online review for herb scissors (& more!). We asked Horton how the project began, how she choose to order the vignettes, and a recent film she’s loved…

1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?

I’ve been interested in filmmaking since I was pretty young. I wanted to be an actress at first, after seeing Charlie’s Angels, and then realized I was too controlling so I started making films instead. That’s pretty much how it went down, ha! I made short films throughout high school and then was a Film Studies major at Wesleyan University. It’s always been what makes me feeI calm and happiest so I’ve tried to follow that. I enjoy the whole process, from writing to shooting and editing. I made my way to New York after college and have been working in film and have continued to write and direct work since then. My dad is a photographer and now filmmaker too, so he’s been a constant example that you can be a freelance artist and still make a living — an important role model!

2) How did this project start - do you remember the first vignette you thought of, and how did you go about compiling the others? What did a particular idea need to have to fit with the others?

When I started the project, I was feeling a bit lost in regards to what I wanted to make work about. So I started jotting down ideas in notebooks and watching filmmakers that I admired for their bold voices like Mike Leigh, Roy Andersson, Ruben Östlund. Broad, dark comedy about our little lives. I’m very fascinated by the little choices we make and how we spend our time. Through this, the vignettes formed. I remember being like, “I’m going to make this super weird film that’s anti-dramatic and no one will get it and I don’t care what anyone thinks!” My rebel attitude soon gave way to supreme anxiety that it would be terrible. So that’s a hard balance to strike when creating work — what do you want to make vs. do you want anyone to enjoy the film. I think it needs to be both unique to you and entertaining.

The first vignette I wrote was about pharmacists debating what medicine to give to a customer, inspired by a John Oliver joke where he googles “does loneliness cause the farts?” or something like that. I realized shooting in a pharmacy would be difficult, so that morphed into a Doctor’s Office scene. Around the same time I was thinking about a hilarious online review that a friend had written, complaining about the wide mouth of a water bottle. That inspired a review scene, and I eventually found an Amazon review for a pair of herb scissors and used that to build a scene around. Truth is stranger than fiction! My mom really loves herb scissors, she buys them for everyone, so it really spoke to me.

I wanted to do a punchy segment about prayer, which is how I came to the football scene. I find corporate speak to be hilariously confounding, so that’s how the credit score/bereaved actress scene came to be. The interstitial non-dialogue scenes were very late additions. Once I was in the edit, it was clear that the scenes needed beats between them for pacing and to ground the film more in the abstract and absurd. You know when you’re walking around in the world and you see things and you’re just like “Whyyyyyy?” That’s the vibe I wanted to bring.

Some scenes didn’t make it into the script because they were usually too complicated or character-driven, felt too specific. And then some were too slow, like I originally had a prayer scene where someone is just wearing a shirt that says “Pray Until Something Happens” and then had to admit that doesn’t really count as a scene...though I did end up filming a billboard.

3) Were there other segments that you filmed but didn’t make the final cut. If so, can you briefly describe them, and why they were removed? Either way, can you discuss the challenge of what order to place the segments in - were those clear decisions for you, or did you try out some different placements?

The only scene that didn’t make the cut was an interstitial scene where two people are standing on a street corner texting, underneath a Stock Exchange ticker tape. It didn’t fit with the pacing of the film and didn’t make as much sense thematically with the other segments. Sadly that was my cameo in the film.

I had to move things around in the edit for sure. Originally I started with the Doctor’s Office scene, but the Mistakenly Bereaved Actress is a more straightforward story with a clear arc, and therefore felt like a better entry point for the audience. Then we can go off and get a little weirder. I always ended with the Review and the Punk Band. The Review is the longest piece so we had to work up to that, and the Punk Band has the clock exploding for the ending which needed to be the final punch. The whole film, the pacing, the order, even the content, was one of the more intuitive projects I’ve done. It was very hard to verbalize why and how it was going to work, but I just felt my way through it and hoped it would land well. It was nerve-wracking!

4) Perhaps my favorite segment is the herb scissors review. Do you personally ever leave reviews for products or anything else on the web? Any personal experience with spending a lot of time doing something that ultimately was erased?

Thank you! I pretty much never leave reviews for things on the internet but I love to read product reviews and YouTube comments. It’s like shouting into the void, “I’m here!!” However the experience of having your work erased is a very familiar feeling as well as a constant nightmare! Especially when I used to use Final Cut Pro I had projects crash and work erased all the time. For three solid minutes you feel like the world is ending and you’ve wasted your entire life. That is definitely where the “delete” button in that scene came from.

5) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?

I just got around to seeing Toni Erdmann and it’s absolutely incredible! I can’t believe it took me so long to see it. I love the broad and dry comedy of the film as well as the contradictions and surprises the characters bring to the story. Some of the scenes are just so hard to watch but also contain tremendous honesty, which is why it’s so good. And the performances are excellent.

Bonus Question: What’s next for you?

I am writing a feature screenplay! Wish me luck! :)

Contact Info:

IG: @asbhorton