5 Questions with Peter Molesworth
1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?
I’ve always wanted to make movies although I never imagined I would direct them. I grew up playing make believe in my parent’s garage beside a towering collection of their production equipment. I was a pretty distracted kid though, so even when my dad, who is a DP, would bring me along to shoots, I didn’t learn much about his craft and still cannot operate a camera with much skill.
I started making film out of a little bit of defiance and a little bit of desperation, to be honest. I knew I could act, that I was a competent person generally, and I couldn’t be bothered to wait for someone to tell me I was attractive enough, or educated enough, or well-connected enough to get a solid acting gig in LA or New York, so I started creating my own work. I had a great mentor say to me though, importantly, if you’re going to make a film, make a film. By that, I think he meant don’t try it half-heartedly, go for it, learn something new, push yourself and do it fully. That advice has stayed with me. I’m not sure I even qualify as a filmmaker yet, though… I think I’m just very impatient, full of too much energy, and I have enough audacity to try things I don’t know if it means getting to do what I love.
2) What’s the backstory here - what was the initial idea and how did it evolve from there?
It’s difficult to remember the exact sequence of thoughts that led me to write the film and I don’t think I can say with confidence there was one specific spur. At the time of its inception, I was on a residency in Italy and I was in the midst of writing a longer piece that is very personal and full of a lot of grief. I was reading a lot of Elena Ferrante. I was thinking of my best friend Honor constantly, who is much tougher than I am, and has always been. On the days I couldn’t gather myself to write that story, I was observing some of the other artists I was with, having long conversations with them: Nadine Goepfert, Zoë Ghertner, Anna Skladmann, among treasured others, whose work influenced me a great deal as I sat beside them.
It’s true that the people closest to me in my life have always been women, so I am often compelled to think and write about them. I knew when I started that I wanted to write a story that wrestled with gender, most crucially, which meant to me it would be a female story, one that examined emotional labor, that questioned whether strength has a gender, and presented in an acute manner the suffering that occurs under the codified gender norms we all adhere to; the norms and rules that have been cruel to me in my life, to my friends, to my mother, and to the men I know, too. We all suffer. I mean to say, it was everything at once that nudged me to write the script, I don’t think I can put my finger on it precisely and I haven’t finished thinking and wanting to write about it all. I think Fix was my first crack at it.
I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but one thing I do remember that led me to the concept of the vow of silence specifically was a hatred for the sound of my own speaking voice. I know it’s unkind to think that way about myself, but I mention it to note the irony of it in retrospect. Although the film has very little dialogue, Daniel is the character who probably says the most words.
3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And generally what part of the creative process do you enjoy the most, and the least?
The biggest challenge of making Fix was probably deciding when to picture lock. My favorite author says something that resonates with me about editing her books and knowing when she’s done—she likens the experience to poking holes in a cake to see if it’s baked through. I’m still learning how to feel, know, and trust that the cake’s baked.
I really love watching performances on the monitor, but my favorite part of the creative process is probably sitting with everyone after wrapping for the day, feeling tired but having a glass of wine and a skinny dip in the pond anyway. My least favorite part is keeping track of which coffee cup is mine.
4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?
Shoplifters by Hirokazu Koreeda. Sakura Andô’s performance amazes me. For a film with such epic feelings, all the performances are so light footed, so personal, full of power and fragility. I love that it’s intergenerational, that it deals with class, family; chosen and otherwise. The filmmaking is similarly effortless, beautifully conceived and framed. I feel like Koreeda always gets out of the film’s way, he never imposes some kind of auteur-istic style onto the story, he just wants to show you an intimate portrait of a family, this microcosm of people living in an unforgiving and still somehow joyful world. The whole film sweeps me away every time I watch it.
Obviously Parasite really fucked me up, too.
5) What’s next for you?
Well, the first thing is going to be getting through this pandemic with my head on straight. So, immediately on the docket is to read as much as I can in the down time. After that, if the world hasn’t completely fallen apart, I’m going to shoot my next short film. It’s about a young man struggling to understand the disappearance of his boyfriend. Trusting that love and childhood, and all the parts of life that moved us before will still be relevant once we’re through the worst of this.
—
http://cueforpassion.org
IG: @petermolesworth