5 Questions with Blair Waters
1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?
It started with being really into music, just filming bands and making pretty dumb videos for friends. In terms of actual narrative filmmaking, that’s super recent. Princess Rita is actually the very first film I’ve ever made.
2) What was the initial idea for this project and how did it evolve from there?
The film is an adaptation of a short story that my friend Mallory was writing. We’re both really interested in scams and how depressing Florida secretly is — Mallory is from there, I’m from the Virgin Islands, and the dichotomy of being unhappy in colorful, tropical places is something we’ve talked about a lot. I’m also continually fascinated by the thin line between reality and fantasy. It’s what my newest project is about too, so I just loved the plot immediately and could see it finished in my mind and looking very nice. When Mallory told me about it, I’m pretty sure she meant that maybe-at-some-point-sometime we could turn it into a film, but when I get into something I get very into it, and I basically forced her to meet with me weekly. It was finessed it a lot and it’s very different than its initial form — her short story was more interestingly layered but the script focuses more on Alan, and the final edit is even more explicitly centered on his inner world. Also, the timing was right: an amateur porn star had recently stolen my name and I found you get hired way less when someone Googles you and it’s an endless stream of really graphic porn. So I had a lot of free time. The whole thing was really weird, as she was also using identifying information about me in her accounts and not just the name. I spent so much time wondering about who was actually behind the screen doing this, and that contributed a lot to why I was so into this concept.
3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And the easiest part?!
Almost everything in pre-production was a challenge. We had a pathetically small budget and because we shot in Florida, it wasn’t like we could augment crew with friends, as the only friend I have in Florida is a woman in her 80s named Ruth and we were already shooting half of it in her house. I tried to hire at least some crew locally but was getting the most ridiculous quotes, like there is technically a sound guy in the Everglades but he wanted 1/3 of our budget for half a day. That was really surprising to me, and it was across the board, so we had to fly six people to Florida and back. I spent days of my life finding cheap flights and then we spent another 2 days driving to various airports in Florida where those flights arrived. And we also couldn’t afford lights so everything had to be shot in natural light, and getting the rights to True Love Will Find You In the End was a saga that ended with Daniel Johnston’s brother helping us out, but that’s a whole other story.
The easiest: working with everyone. The actual production was really fun - it was a wonderful group of people and we had little parties at night. Fedor, our lead actor, had no problem with shooting in seven different locations in one day, eating the disgusting sandwiches I made (“catering”) or anything that would have made a self-important actor bitchy. He’s very cool and down for the cause and I appreciated that immensely. And Logan, our DP, is just genuinely excited about life and gets so happy when something looks good in frame - really invaluable when you’re making someone shoot handheld for 12 hours straight. Everyone on this just wanted to make something for the sake of making something, and I love that.
4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?
Animal Love by Ulrich Seidl. It’s a documentary from the 90s about people obsessed with their pets (very relatable) but the framing and textures in that film makes me salivate...it’s like Roy Andersson meets Gummo meets Larry Sultan. I guess I really loved it because I’d seen it before maybe five years ago but every time it went to a new location I felt the same way as when I first saw it, just so happy because this is a world I want to live in and the faces I want to see on a screen. Werner Herzog sums it up nicely with his quote on the cover: “Never have I looked so directly into hell.”
5) What’s next for you?
I wrote a TV show and it got into the IFP Labs! It’s called Miracle Lake and is loosely based on the weirdest true story I’ve ever heard. Writing it was like this revelation of why filmmaking is so incredible — since I didn’t write Princess Rita this experience of being able to totally build this amalgamation of my inner universe was really new to me and pretty mind blowing. So I hope someone is into it at IFP Week. Or if you are reading this and are a fancy executive and are interested in the story of “a teenage girl uncovering the dark truth behind a secret program at her school,” call me. My number is 917-667-7133.
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www.blairwaters.com
IG: @blairlorien