By Cole Smithey
Daring sex scenes are an obvious way for young filmmakers to prove to the world that they are capable of shocking society. Witness Steven Soderbergh’s "sex, lies and videotape." So it is that upstart filmmaker Talia Lugacy crafts a revenge drama–ala "Ms. 45" or "Irreversible"–where college student (Rosario Dawson) becomes a date-rape victim before setting a revenge trap that culminates in one of the most over-the-top sex scenes in recent memory. Chad Faust ("Saved") plays Jared, the sociopath rapist, with an appropriately menacing and warped romantic air that reflects well off of Rosario Dawson’s compact performance. "Descent" is the worst date movie of the year, and the sucker punch that it packs will definitely twist the guts of most viewers into lasting knots. Apart from its obvious exploitation element and disjointed second act, the movie achieves a cool momentum by sheer force of the intimate power play that takes place over the course of a slow build-up. It’s a modern "art film," and there aren’t many of those around anymore.
I sat down with Talia Lugacy and Rosario Dawson at the Lowe’s Regency Hotel in Midtown Manhattan to find out more about the making of "Descent."
CS: Where did you two first meet?
Talia Lugacy: In an acting class actually, this place called "Lee Strasburg." I was there because I was dying to be a director and I couldn’t get into film school ‘cause I was too young, so I just went in there to check out what the actors were up to, so I could gather from that, and she was in class, and I wasn’t talking to anybody and she just kind of walked up and introduced herself to me and we’ve sort of been best friends ever since.
Rosario Dawson: She had this great T-shirt that came down to her knees, this Stanley Kubrick T-shirt, "A Clockwork Orange", an image of the actual poster of it, but it looked like a full-size poster on her body while she was walking around. It was interesting because people in my neighborhood do a lot of advertising for free. (laughter) In this particular instance, I was like "Kubrick? Nice! How old are you?" I liked her immediately. She was just sitting there grumbling and I put my hand out and said "Hi!" and she looked at it for a while, like "Really?" I’m like, "Wow, I like you already! How does that work?"
CS: As the producer, how involved were you in making the movie?
RD: Very. It was fun. I got to be there for the very first conversation where Talia approached me about whether or not they should even write it, down to being on the phone within the past few days to finalize one of the last songs we got the music rights for the release.
CS: How aware were you of other revenge films like "Irreversible" and "Ms. 45" when you were planning the staging of the sex scenes?
TL: It’s interesting. I can see why you ask that obviously. I did see "Irreversible" after Brian and I wrote it, and "Ms. 45" is something people tell me about that I still haven’t seen and there’s also a Farrah Fawcett movie. "Hard Candy" came out even after we shot the film. It’s really more of a coincidence of style. I wouldn’t even categorize it in that genre either, especially when we came up with the idea. It was not supposed to be and I don’t believe it is now. I don’t think it’s one of those very genre-driven horrific films. I don’t consider it to be that, and I just don’t consider it a "revenge" film, because it’s only about revenge in the last ten minutes, if you even want to call it that. It’s not as if we’re spending half an hour or forty minutes and she’s figuring out how she’s going to get her revenge. It’s not about that. You could very easily have gone through the entire film with her having made a different decision of where it was going to go and what she was going to do. It happens that this is a choice she decided to make, but she made that choice 20 minutes before the film was over. It’s really much more about how far down is she going to go into this state of mind that she’s been put in because she was gripped by a violent act and that’s what we’re following and that’s where it takes her.
Q: Where did you have to go inside yourself to portray this character?
RD: I had to just be willing to be vulnerable and open and also I had to think not like myself because this was a woman who went into that situation with some naivete and some insecurities that I don’t have and made choices thereafter that weren’t mine. I had to just be really honest to that because that’s the story we were telling. I think it’s unfortunately a very common story, so in a lot of ways, I say that I felt like I was wading through water and there was a lot of resistance to everything that I was doing. I had to be very methodical about every single moment including the long passage of time where I wasn’t speaking, which was difficult. I wanted her to be stronger and smarter in her decisions and wanting all those different things and to scream and shake her and reach out to do something more positive with this, and be frustrated with the fact that it wasn’t because she was uneducated. It wasn’t the fact that she didn’t have a good life.
Those weren’t the obvious issues that were holding her back. They were much different and much more internal and about the make-up of her character in a lot of ways. They’re human flaws, and those are hard, because we want to resist those. That was a lot of what we were trying to do with this story in general, was look at the ugly, not just at the world around us but within ourselves, that we can allow ourselves to get to these ugly places, that we can do things to each other, that we can perpetuate violence cyclically because we refuse to look at those issues. It was really particular, and it was great to have that challenge and be a part of the greater challenge of producing a film and making it happen and being behind the story and being honest with it. We weren’t doing it with anything easy about it. We didn’t have a big budget. We didn’t have a huge crew or a bunch of supporters. We had enough to keep us through but we had to fight the entire way and definitely through that, I was finding that performance.
CS: Did you find yourself taking the character home with you?
RD: Yeah, in a lot of ways, there were so many different experiences that I was going through on this, so after we would finish shooting this and then we’d go home and be giddy because we are making our movie and we’d shot really beautiful stuff that day. We were excited about what we were shooting the next day even if it was horrifying. We were twelve years into our dream and that was phenomenal. There was very drastic, emotional changes. Afterwards, I did need to shut down. My body was exhausted and I needed a break, and I went home with my boyfriend and we talked and chilled out. It was like I just needed a complete nothing ‘cause it was really difficult having such high highs and low lows and maintaining such a strong vibration the entire time. It was interesting. Because I was wearing the producer’s hat, I was sometimes able to step out of it and not indulge certain emotions for too long because when it was "cut" then we were thinking about something else and I had a different hat on. In some ways, that saved me sometimes from some psychological damage on that.
CS: There’s a pretty big gap in the movie between the second and third acts. Did you work out what was going on in Maya’s life and mind during that period?
TL: I suppose so in as much as we made purposeful decisions about knowing what she did, but we also more consciously decided the audience doesn’t need to know that. They can gather it if they want to, but the fact that she doesn’t report (the rape). This is that story and that’s very intentional. One of the things we discovered in telling a story like this is that there’s some statistic of 65 – 70% of women who are raped never not only don’t report it but never tell anyone in their lives. That’s what surprises me now as I’m reading people’s reactions to this movie and they’re very upset like, "Why didn’t she go and do something about it?" Why don’t the majority of people do it? Well, that’s what this story is. The story is that she is so traumatized that she can’t talk about it, and the going through and talking about it and putting it into words and putting your voice on it is that traumatizing and humiliating. It’s something you don’t want to go through it again, and that’s the choice that she makes and that’s the journey that we’re following and that was intentional. There is that space open and that’s on purpose.
CS: Who would you say is the audience for the movie? Do you think it’s a midnight "grindhouse" type film?
TL: It’s hard to know. I’ve seen so many different people from different areas and demographics love the film or hate the film and it’s all so personal, so it’s hard to… at different times, we thought we had the sense of who the audience definitely is or where it’s best to release the film but we’ll find out. There’s no definitive answer to that.
RD: We have some experience through Tribeca (the Film Festival). We screened it on several different days at varying times, midnight screenings, four o’clock screening, and every time, it was packed and every time, we had a multitude of people of different races, different ages and sexes, and the effect was consistent, that it was impactful, so that’s pretty amazing. We’d definitely had times where we did early screenings and people were like, ‘It’s a little harrowing to see this and then walk out into broad daylight." (laughter) It’s amazing because people watch it late at night and no matter, this movie is hard to watch.
CS: What were the Q&A sessions like after people watched the movie at the Tribeca Film Festival?
TL: They were shaken up and they were ready to ask questions, which was really cool. I attributed that to being a very New York centric audience. People were not afraid to say what they thought. They were very disturbed by it and at the same time very curious, so the dialogues were fun and the reactions were very varied. For the most part, the people who chose to ask questions were very enthusiastic and interested, like "Where on earth did this come from?" and "How did you manage to get money to do something like this?" All this stuff which I would be thinking if I saw this movie from somebody else for sure.
RD: And thanking us. There was a lot of statements. People who would just raise their hand to make a statement about why it affected them or making revealing remarks about themselves as complete strangers to a huge audience, just feeling compelled to do that. But we always started off talking first, made a couple mentions of the actual creation of the movie, how long and I have known each other, how this is not the first project we’ve done, what it kind of took to get there, which was always kind of a lead-in for everyone to ask questions. It does take a second because it is very shocking and it ends on a high note that it takes a minute for people to catch their breath. It takes a minute every time for me to catch my breath. I always feel like my heart is racing whenever I start the Q ‘n’ A, not because I’m going to apologize or make excuses, but just because it’s hard to watch. It really is. It works on me as well. If with that kind of thing where you set it off, they’re still not necessarily willing to raise their hand. It’s a vulnerable position to be in for any movie you watch, but every time, once we started that initial conversation, five hands would jump up like "Now I’m ready to ask." It was awesome.
CS: Are there any other films the two of you are in production with and do you have a vision statement for Tribe?
TL: To make goddamn good films. We haven’t actually written one out yet completely. It’s been something that Rosario and myself and my cousin have been into and have been talking about and developing for the longest time. We’ve sort of got an interesting house of films that are quite different than "Descent."
RD: And ultimately our motto is basically in our name, "Tribe," and so far it’s just about making films that the three of us unto ourselves are 100% behind and feeling comfortable that we have the talent and the motivation and the discipline to actually create it in a way that can be delivered to audiences and that it is viable out there. We have tested it out and done several shorts together and this film is yet another. We really want to do this and we can be bad at it and telling stories that people don’t want to hear or we can be wrong about, but this film was an opportunity to put ourselves out there and it worked really well. I think it made an impact and I think it’s going to set the temperature where the next couple of things that we do, even if they vary a lot in genre and tone, I think people are going to get that we’re going to always be very respectful and 100% behind that story. It’s not going to be diluted and not be done by committee. It’s going to be done by us and we want to be able to brand that in a way where when we say, "Hey, come check out our film" that it’s going to be an experience, whether you love it or hate it. The response we’ve had has been fascinating even from people who don’t like the film, don’t like it for personal issues and they really respect the movie as itself. It’s not going against her for being a first-time director or going against me for being an actor-producer who’s just doing a glamour project.
RD: Can you talk about what you’re doing next? I understand that it’s a comedy?
Dawson: "Incense and Peppermints."
TL: This is something we produced together that’s not a performance-vehicle but it’s another thing I wrote with my cousin, and it’s sort of inspired by a true story that was passed down by my family. It’s a very simple tale. It takes place in the 1960’s and it’s about this family that’s coming apart at the seams. A mother who is wildly liberated in a kind of a sadly tragic but funny way and a son who is trying to keep control of his little world and survive without the presence of his father and how the two of them get by. It’s kind of like "Little Miss Sunshine"-y but ten times more insane and surreal and kind of crazy, fun, sweet. Very, very different from "Descent" in a lot of ways, which is quite nice.
