5 Questions with Steven Raia
1. Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?
I was kind of a dramatic kid growing up, and always really liked movies, and probably wanted to be famous. I liked attention. I would do a lot of embarrassing things because I thought the reactions they provoked were funny. I’ve mellowed out a lot but what I found funny as a kid is pretty much what I find funny now.
My dad showed me a lot of great movies, and I probably get a lot of my technical dexterity from him. When I was 3 or 4 he recorded Ace Ventura: Pet Detective on a cassette tape but he didn’t want me or my siblings to watch the inappropriate scenes, so he devised this method of taking the VCR and timing it out so that when a bad part came on he recorded a black screen over the tape until it was over. So when we watched the movie as a family it would cut to black and we’d wait a little while and then it cut back to the movie. I’ve always really loved that. It feels like how they would censor movies in Russia. It sounds silly but him doing that was my earliest exposure to film editing in the flesh!
2) What’s the backstory here - what was the initial idea and how did it evolve from there?
I’m half Jewish on my mom’s side but my dad raised us in the Catholic church. I was an altar boy with my twin brother and I remember there were these older altar servers at our church who told us they were aspiring actors, and that the only reason they were altar serving was because it was another opportunity to be on a “stage” in front of an audience. Which is crazy. Those two things could not be any more different. You don’t even get a round of applause. But the ego of believing something like that was so funny to me that I never forgot it.
I think the movie itself is less about religion than it is about people who are really desperate for attention, and use the performing arts to indulge their vanity. That sounds really critical but I am absolutely that person! I tend to have very conflicting/cynical feelings about pursuing a career in the entertainment industry, and the kinds of personalities it attracts, so after four exhausting years of film school it seemed like a good subject matter for my senior thesis.
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?
You’d think the biggest challenge would be directing a kid, but that turned out to be the only easy part because Elliot Higgins is such a natural comedic actor. I really didn’t have to say anything to him, his sense of humor is so sharp that he always understood exactly what he was doing or why any of it was funny, probably even better than I did. And when someone is that funny, particularly a kid, you would think they’d be impossible to tame—but Elliot has such a strong sense of control as an actor. He always struck exactly the right tone for the character, which is shocking considering most of the movie was improvised. It was kind of dazzling. He totally owns this movie and I’m so proud of him.
I enjoy editing a lot because it’s the part of filmmaking I think I understand the most. I like directing but I really don’t like being on set—I’m pretty introverted so it saps a lot of my energy. And it’s obviously a very social job—you’re just constantly talking to people who are a lot cooler and smarter than you. But I usually work with my best friends, who happen to also be really nice and generous people, so I always feel supported.
4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?
The first movie I saw when I got to New York for school was Alex Ross Perry’s Listen Up Philip, and I just watched it again the other day. I think self-obsession is really funny, particularly when it involves artists, and the characters in that movie are just so brutally selfish. You sort of just cringe at it for two hours, just feeling so embarrassed for these people. But it’s also good at showing you how wounded they are, and those small moments are really wonderful. In general I love movies that peel at your nerves like that. Albert Brooks and Elaine May do it the best I think.
5) What’s next for you?
I’m currently writing the feature film version of Understudy Angel. Just kidding, that would be pretty dumb. I’m working on a new short film now that I hope to shoot this summer!
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http://www.vimeo.com/steveraia
IG: @stevenraia