5 Questions with Ariel Gardner

The brutally incisive, “Molly’s Single,“ by director Ariel Gardner, follows its protagonist through a painful break-up and a series of bad dates aimed at moving on. We asked Gardner how it began, how he sees the behavior of his characters, and why he shot with an old miniDV camera…

1) You’ve been making shorts for awhile now. The only one I’ve seen is “Sound Speeds,” but I just checked out your IMDB and was surprised to see a lot of directorial credits. What are all those movies / shows? How did you initially get into filmmaking?

Me and my brother used to run around in the backyard making in-camera movies on a miniDV camera just to make each other laugh. It was a thing to do. When I was about 13, I picked up some editing software and got into David Lynch. I discovered you can put the Mulholland Drive score underneath the stupidest shit and get a pretty interesting result. In high school & college, I would get high with like-minded friends and we would try our hands at absurdist comedy along the lines of Stella Shorts, just to make each other laugh. Embarrassing to see now of course, but you gotta start somewhere.

Most of my efforts since have been products of a partnership I had with a supremely brilliant, talented, and funny dude. We were pretty prolific for almost a decade, churning out sketches, shorts, and web-series. We made stuff about killing babies, throwing fishbowls, fucking robots, that sort of thing. Mostly the goal was to make each other laugh. We made a feature a couple years ago (On The Rocks) that didn't get very far, but it was received positively by anyone who saw it. The last thing we made together was this weird 10-minute riff on Liar Liar for Adult Swim called Cool Dad starring Jerry O'Connell.

Since we parted ways, I more or less had to tear myself down, re-learn who I was as an individual, re-evaluate the kind of stories I wanted to tell, and start over from scratch. This is my first solo endeavor in some time.

2) Okay, so how did you go about making this one? What was the seed and where did you go from there?

I feel like a first major break-up can be pretty devastating for most people. In my case, I got slammed pretty hard. And it was my fault, so I was living in a world of shame, guilt and remorse. After some time, I was able to find solace and strength through connection with others who had gone through similar experiences.

One night, I was watching "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" on my phone, and I was able to access a sincere bit of compassion for myself in that moment. For whatever reason, it inspired me to tap into some of these feelings for this story.

From there, I just wanted to explore my feelings surrounding dating in general. It's kind of a nightmare. You're just throwing yourself into a position where there are constant evaluations being made of/from the person sitting across from you, what levels of intimacy you each are available for, what you have to offer to each other, whether or not you even like this person. It's minefield I find more nerve-wracking than any action movie.

Beyond that, I guess I found a sense of purpose in humanizing those who have made mistakes in a world consumed by harsh judgement. To provide a voice of support for anyone who wants better for themselves.

3) I see this as a pretty brutal snapshot for the most part. And it doesn’t really hide behind humor, or anything else, at least not how I viewed it. How did you reach this harsh tone / Do you think it’s harsh? 

Hmmm, throughout the years I've been told how dark, bleak, or brutal my work can be. Like it's a cause for concern almost. And each time it still feels like a surprise, because these are just my natural base-line inclinations in storytelling. My biggest fear is that it’ll be boring, so maybe I overcompensate in the other direction. I've worked on plenty stories with pretty grim subject matter; I honestly thought I was making something on the softer side with this one. Perhaps what many see as brutality, I see as a checkmark to know that the story is worth telling. I like to be hit hard, square, and direct with any material I work on. Especially if it's something low-concept enough to be dismissible, "oh it's a movie about a break-up boo-hoo." Baumbach is a guiding light for me in these respects, he's a real master of pointed, interpersonal brutality. 

From a writing perspective, I see brutality as a side-effect of honesty. I love clarity. I get tremendously excited whenever a character decides to lay all their cards on the table. I live for that.

4) There’s some real questionable behavior on display here from the men that come into Molly’s life. It’s very incisive with regard to capturing the ways they conduct themselves. I’m thinking of the photographer who tries to kiss Molly without any indication she’s interested, and then coerces her into modeling for him, and then jokes he should pay her for it, but doesn’t. I guess the question is: what was your process in writing these men characters and sculpting them as selfish / manipulative?

It starts from a place of Molly's position at that point in her life, her low self-esteem, her passivity, her need to be viewed as desirable, even acceptable. She really doesn't know what she wants for herself, so she more or less goes with the flow of whatever's in front of her. If you're living in a cloud of uncertainty, it's so much easier to say "I don't know what I want, you tell me what you want, we'll do that, and I'll see how I feel about it and process it later." I know I've been there. It can be pretty dangerous territory, you might find yourself giving the green light to questionable behavior. 

With Robert's character, it is a bit condemning, but I wrote it from a place of empathy. I feel like he leverages himself to be in a position of power out of his fear of rejection. I think he's got some self-esteem issues himself. I can definitely track what he might have been thinking in each of those instances of transgression. For the kiss, his assumption is that if she's there for a date, then she must be there for physical intimacy. Under that assumption, he felt it would be a cool, bold move to eliminate the uneasy tension. For the shoot, he's a bit more cautious and asks for permission to make sure they’re on the same page. Of course, his eye is focused entirely on how to get the image he wants more than whatever she may be feeling. He takes her agreeableness at face value, it's what he wants to hear. As far as the money goes, I think he was feeling uneasy about what just occurred, how she might be perceiving him. He makes a crack assuming she'd laugh at the idea that this was anything but a friendly collaboration between two artists. Of course she's not there to be a professional model by any means, but it's pretty manipulative to push the idea that paying her would be an absurd notion.

In every case, although I understand his thinking, the issue is that he's taking actions based on his assumptions and perceptions rather than making the effort to communicate. It's pretty clear his first priority is getting what he wants, next would be how she perceives him, and last would be how she's actually feeling. Even though she tells him what she's going through, he chooses to disregard it. He seems to lack any real sense of empathy or respect for her. And yet, all of this seems to be a pretty routine, if awkward, exchange for the both of them. It's sad stuff.

I think he might be aware of this selfishness to some degree, but he definitely doesn’t let it keep him up at night. Denial is a pretty powerful thing. It's the shock absorber that allows you to keep doing whatever you're doing and feel good about it. Of course, if he was able to really see what he was doing, I think it'd make him sick to his stomach. Nobody who's a villain is really aware of what they're doing or why they're doing it, it seems. 

Thankfully, our society is coming into more and more awareness about all this stuff, especially in the art world where you have plenty of untreated depressed and anxious children dressed up as attractive adults running amok. I just wanted to tap into a few specific examples of this sort of behavior, allow the viewer to live in that tension for a moment, feel it, hopefully learn from it.

I didn't intend to make a statement that men are inherently manipulative or selfish by nature, but being a man who's made male mistakes, I do feel I was processing some anger towards myself and my own species.

5) Shifting gears now, can you talk a bit about the visual landscape of the film? What were some guiding principles, or goals with the images, which I loved and felt very expressive in a lo-fi way.

Mostly practical. I shot a little documentary early last year that made me realize I can be a one-man crew and accomplish everything I needed to tell a story on my own. It felt liberating, even if I didn't feel confident with my camera work.

Everything looks so fucking good these days, I don't really have the resources or talent to stand out in that way. And personally, I find myself being drawn to less resolution on images. The dirtier the better. It's starting to feel more authentic than the pristine images that are widely available nowadays. 

So I landed on using an old miniDV cam. There's benefits and drawbacks for sure. The benefit is that I think you can get a really intimate product, more or less a blood transfusion from me straight to the viewer. But there's a real danger to having it feel like kids running around making a movie in their backyard, so you're relying entirely on the writing and the performances to carry the piece. I had a lot of doubts whether or not it would land, but I put my faith in the idea that I would be able to reach people even if it was shot on a toaster. 

Plus, you get less scheduling conflicts when you don't have a crew.

From a creative standpoint, I tried to keep my distance, remain a fly-on-the-wall and avoid coverage whenever possible. I feel it’s the best way to get the sense that they're living, breathing people and you’re in the room with them. 

Some scenes you gotta get in there and tell the story with close-ups. Other scenes you just feel it too much. I couldn't help but linger back as far as possible. I always think of the camera panning away from Travis on the phone in Taxi Driver. It just gets too uncomfortable, you can't look. I try to follow that instinct. It's like when you're in the passenger seat of a car when it brakes abruptly, and your mother reaches out her arm to protect you. That's how it feels when I stay in the wide, I'm protecting the audience from the scene. Don't look children.

Bonus question: It’s a complicated ending, but I do feel like there is some level of redemption because Molly expresses herself in a way that feels profound. How did you arrive at this ending? What was the feeling you wanted to leave people with?

Initially, with the last sequence, I was aiming for something a little sadder. I wanted to put her with someone who had so much going on, there wasn't enough space for her. And then the "Thanks." note would be some sort of dark punchline, that the intimacy was only transactional.

That's still there a little but, I sat with it for a while before I got the sense I was missing a real opportunity to show some growth. To give Molly what she really needs, just someone to listen to her, to provide her with some perspective. So I just let loose and and let her vomit out her entire thought process, this obsessive cycle, desperately seeking a way out of it. She's at her wit's end, asking how to love someone else, (someone who was cruel to her), rather than asking how to love herself. But of course, the only way out of living under the thumb of someone else's perceptions is to begin to shift the focus towards how you can take care of yourself.

I typically have a pretty strong aversion to a supporting character coming out of the woodwork with their perspective as a resolve. So I had a sense of doubt ending the scene where I did. But when we shot it, at the end of the first take, Magi just let out this big sigh and I felt a palpable sense of relief in that room.

I wrote that it ends with her clipping her toenails without much thought, before I really knew why. Later I realized it was just a simple act of self-care, the only thing she hasn't tried yet. (And, in the smallest way, an empowering reversal in the sense that at the very top of the story she's biting her nails out of anxiety.)

I expect the audience to feel a small sense of relief at the end, not because she's gained anything, but because she was beginning the process of letting go. I hope, that in some small way, the initial title card feels ominous, "oh no she's single," and the final title card feels more uplifting, "oh thank God she's single". 

It's matter of perception, you could either see being single as a sense of loss, or a sense of freedom. It's just so difficult when you're consumed with guilt, it feels as though you're not allowed to hold onto positive perceptions.

I don't know. I think it's a nice ending. You got the birds chirping, the dogs barking, the church bells chiming, the American Flag waving. There's a real sense of relief and optimism, at least for me.

2nd Bonus question: What else are you working on at the moment?

I have a script for the next short in the oven, and a script for a feature in the slow cooker. The next short will be focused on resentment, sort of a Force Majeure type deal. Hope to shoot that this year.