Austinist Interviews Filmmaker Andrew Bujalski

When you sat down to write Funny Ha Ha, did you expect it to get produced?

Who knows. It's hard to have a grip on the reality of what that means if you've never done it. Of course, paradoxically, it's that naiveté that usually gives you the moxie to get impossible things done.

When I was 7 or so I remember plotting with some friends to murder our lunch lady through some weird Rube Goldberg-ian scheme we drew out with markers on white paper. We never went through with it, but it seemed real to us when we talked about it. Writing a script is probably somewhere in a similar fantasy realm.

I read somewhere that you wrote Funny with Kate Dollenmayer in mind, basically knowing that her ability to carry the film made it a viable project. How did you meet Kate?

Kate and I went to college together but never really knew each other, only got to be pals in the last few weeks. Then we ended up moving down to Austin with a couple other friends in '99 and were roommates, and during that period I wrote Funny Ha Ha...Also Kate's dad co-wrote a popular German textbook (Neue Horizonte) with my uncle...

Speaking of writing Funny Ha Ha, I read that you wrote the screenplay while living in Austin. What brought a Massachusetts native down to sweltering Texas?

I was a year out of college and had no responsibilities to anything and I'd always had a theoretical fondness to Texas, just based on movies I guess. I don't know why I thought I'd like it, but I did, it was great. I often fantasize of the alternate universe where I never left Austin. (Never would have made these films but in many other respects would have been better off, I suspect.)

Not to be confrontational, but why did you move back to Boston from Austin to shoot?

There hangs a tale so long and complex that I don't know if I can even reconstruct it properly anymore. For a little while I was trying to get it up and running in Los Angeles, and I think I was very lucky that that didn't happen, we never would have survived it. As it happened, Boston was great, it is still more or less my hometown and people were very good to us here.

Your first film is very character-driven, can you explain your writing process and how you weigh ideas of character, theme and plot in your story-telling?

Mm...Can I? It's 1:30 in the morning and I have a cold and need to get up in a few hours to fly to Austin...So I might punt on this one, too hard, sorry...How about, "Character is destiny"?

I really enjoyed the naturalistic performances in Funny. They featured stammering and pauses that, done poorly, can seem pretentious or contrived beyond belief. Was that pacing and tone a result of improvisation or calculated rehearsal?

Certainly not "calculated rehearsal." I could never have micromanaged performances into those shapes, but neither was the whole thing just spat out in a random improvisation. The script has all kinds of pauses and ellipses and oddball herky-jerkies, which are not necessarily the same ones on the screen...The actors brought life to everything. The page is necessarily inert.

Funny Ha Ha has been screening now, off and on, for four years. That is pretty crazy. What is like to have received critical acclaim that keeps making your little gem of a movie pop up here and there all over the country, even as your second film hits theatres?

Extremely gratifying and extremely strange, particularly when I'm being interviewed! Often when people ask about the origins of the film, I feel a little bit absurd trying to explain or defend some thought process that began in 1999 when I was a year out of college...

What was the inspiration for Mutual Appreciation? Was it another movie written with a friend-as-lead in mind? What happens when you run out of friends for whom to write?

Yeah, Mutual was written for Justin Rice to play the lead. I wouldn't have dared write a musician lead without knowing that I had an ace in the hole who could deliver on that crucial aspect of performance.

As for what happens when I run out of friends, your guess is as good as mine. Enemies?

I imagine, since you had Funny in the can more than four years ago, that you had been working on Mutual Appreciation before the majority of press and acclaim came for your first film. Do you think your approach, or anxiety levels, would have been any different with Mutual had Funny not been an immediate, attention-garnering hit before you began writing the second?

No question. While there was a little bit more sense on the set of Mutual--that we were making something that someone someday might actually SEE--than there ever was on Funny, it was not crushing pressure. I am hoping to shoot something next year and indeed it's a bit terrifying. But I'm pretty sure the work itself will ultimately be more terrifying than any imagined pressure, which will be a relief.

How did your experience working on Funny affect your process of making Mutual?

Probably a million different ways, none of which I can remember!

What are the benefits and drawbacks to wearing the myriad hats of writer, director and editor?

The major benefit is that you're always able to cover up in one role how badly you fucked up in the previous role. The director hides the mistakes of the writer; the editor hides the mistakes of the director. I can't speak so much to the drawbacks...which perhaps speaks to the tunnel vision.

I would imagine that, with the success of Funny, you would have been able to approach some studios, or may even have been chased by them. Why did you decide to return to the low-budget style of your first film?

I'm writing a screenplay for a studio right now and it's great to be not substitute teaching and not clerking in a bookstore or any of the other gigs I've done in recent years, but I still feel like there is life in the kind of work I've done and, as mentioned earlier, I am hoping to another in that vein soon. Like a lot of filmmakers, I think I have the John Sayles fantasy of getting paid for (fairly pleasant) studio work and still doing my own.

Since your success, have you gotten a taste of the difficulty of dealing with the Hollywood machine and the sketchy relationship between art and commerce?

Commerce is okay. Art is much better.

Many young filmmakers and writers talk about the danger of being typecast by the success of their early work, often having to “write themselves” out of their brand. Do you worry that the money-men to whom you will have to eventually turn will pigeon hole you based on these two movies and their themes? Or are you going to continue to make uber-indies?

My films have gotten lots of attention but nobody's made any money off of them and as such I don't think any money-men will have any desire to pigeonhole me. (But will I pigeonhole myself?)

So, you’ve been out of Austin for a few years now? What do you miss about your former home? Any favorite spots you will make sure to hit up while in town over the weekend?

We'll see how the wind blows. I might have to make a stop at Tamale House #3. And of course the coffee houses, Little City, Spiderhouse, Mojo's, Quack's, Flightpath, ALL of them used to be in walking distance of my house on 34th St., and those were the days! Before the days of wireless internet everywhere, I suppose I'd have a different relationship w/ them now than I did then...

We are giving away five pair of tickets to some lucky readers. Enter your information below for a chance to win a pair to the weekend screening of your choice.

Bujalski will be in attendance at the 7:35 and 10:10pm screenings on Friday and Saturday, as well as the 5 & 7:35pm screenings Sunday. That’s a lot of Q&A-ing

Mutual Appreciation
This Weekend
Arbor [map]
Showtimes and Tickets