Filmmaker Interview: Writer/Director Julia Angley
I think compassion is really the big thing, knowing that everyone around you is working hard and that you can trust them. I know that I try to be compassionate in my writing, finding out what makes a character relatable even if they initially appear less than perfect, so I guess that’s the same strategy I use on set.
Julia Angley is the writer/director behind the dramedy short film, Matriarch, which is having its premiere this week at the Woods Hole Film Festival on Cape Cod. I was fortunate enough to play the role of “Nancy” in the film, and I took this opportunity to “sit down” with Julia and ask her about her process. Matriarch is a UCLA graduate film that was shot on location in Massachusetts.
What inspired you to write and direct Matriarch?
I was inspired by the women in my family – I grew up in New England surrounded by women who are, at their best, strong and stubborn, but at their worst, can struggle to express their emotions to each other. Because I have a dark sense of humor, the best way to explore those characters was through dark comedy. I think that there’s a real beauty in watching someone finally allow themselves to feel things, so I conjured up these two women who were dealing with something terrible – a death in the family – while focusing on something a little more mundane.
What types of female characters do you like to write?
I love to write complex female characters – what I love about Mary and Nancy in Matriarch is that they are both dealing with a lot of layers. We don’t explore a ton of their specific backstory in the film, but we know that Mary was the “good daughter” who stayed home to care for her mother, while Nancy followed a different path. I loved watching these two characters interact, and see how their divergent life choices had lead them to very differing perspectives.
Why did you want to shoot in Massachusetts?
I knew this film had to be told in small town New England. I grew up in the town we shot in, at the church we filmed at, and I knew that was the world of the film. Having made films in Los Angeles, I knew I needed a very different backdrop and texture for the emotions of Matriarch to ring true. Everything’s colder in Massachusetts, and not just the snow. There’s a hardness and resilience to the characters that is reflected in the landscape.
What were your references or inspirations for the film’s look, style, and tone?
My references were so diverse! There was modern television, including GLOW and The Crown, there were films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Election – and a ton of films my cinematographer (Lambert Grand) referenced that I can’t quite remember anymore. We knew we wanted the cinematography to be very pretty, shot like a drama, but play with humor inside these static frames, so we watched a lot of comedy to prepare as well. I always talked about this film having a bit of a British comedy feeling to it, where it’s all about what’s proper and what’s not – since I think there can be a lot of that in New England!
What is your process for communicating your vision to the production team?
Pictures, clips, more pictures, music, watching things together, color palettes, paintings. Basically I’m pulling everything that has the right feeling and showing it to my team! I also really wanted to tightly control the color palette of the film – it’s all creams and purples, and very understated. I got my whole team on board with creating that look and feel, and it gives the whole film a very homey, pastoral sort of look.
What is your process for directing actors?
I love digging into backstory. When I’m writing a piece, I usually end up writing long bios for each character. I like to talk through them with my actors, exploring how the characters feel, their perspective on life. I don’t love to rehearse dialogue too much, because I don’t like it to become overly stiff. I think I also spend a lot of time watching for reactions, not just line delivery, because I know how important that’s going to be in the edit. With Matriarch in particular, so much of the film’s tone is based on how the sisters are just reacting to each other, which can be way more important than the lines themselves. So a lot of our time in rehearsal goes to figuring out what emotions are simmering under the surface.
Describe a favorite moment from the film.
My favorite scene was the morning where we shot the penultimate scene. It was just myself and the two actors in the room, and we were rehearsing a scene with only three lines of dialogue, but it’s a key moment where the characters are able to work towards forgiveness. It was our last day of shooting and we didn’t have a crazy schedule that day, so we were able to spend a lot of time just listening to music and talking about the emotions both characters were experiencing in that moment. It was so different from what a film set can sometimes feel like, with no hectic energy, and I think it helped allow the actors to really bring out their best performances in the scene. The end result is a small, delicate moment of connection that I’m really proud of.
Did you meet with any challenges during post-production?
The biggest challenge was the score! I had the cut locked for almost a year and was auditioning different composers, trying out temp music, and experimenting before I hired Michael, who ultimately composed for the piece. It was a breakthrough once we figured out the score, because it really sets the tone for the entire film.
The score is beautiful. How did you work with the composer?
Michael Bryan Stein, the composer for the film, is a genius. I’ve worked with him on three films so far, and he’s just amazing. I described to him the dark tone of the comedy, and he nailed it. He selected the instrumentation, the piano and strings, and made it feel both grand and intimate – which is perfect for dramatizing passive aggression. He understood the balance of leaning into the heightened emotions, satirizing the drama, while also letting those same feelings bring us into something real at the end.
How did your vision for the film, or the film itself, evolve over the course of the filmmaking process?
The great thing was that it came together like a puzzle. In finding collaborators, from the production crew to the cast all the way through post production, every time I found the right collaborator it just felt like it “fit.” And then that person was able to bring something to the film that I hadn’t expected! I love that collaborative nature of filmmaking, because you literally cannot do this by yourself. So I loved just seeing it evolve through the eyes of my cast & crew!
Why are you excited to premiere this film at Woods Hole Film Festival?
I knew I wanted to premiere this film in New England – it just belongs there. I was thrilled when I got the chance to bring it to Woods Hole, because it’s just exactly where it should be! And the virtual format this year has been a bit of a blessing in disguise – I’ve got friends from all over who can all tune in to watch! What a great way to share it with the world.
Matriarch screens online through August 1st. Purchase tickets here. To keep up with Julia and her work, please visit her website.
MY TEACHER
We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.
~ Anton Chekhov
I am heartbroken. My dear acting coach, Jeanie Hackett, passed away from cancer yesterday. She was one of the purest devotees of art I’ve ever known and was vibrantly creating until the very end. Art was her fuel and, in that, she was a kindred spirit. Meeting her seemed like kismet from the beginning. As a teenager, I read every acting book I could find at the library, and one of my go-to favorites was authored by her: a compilation of interviews with her mentor at Williamstown Theatre Festival on the subject of Chekhov. Fittingly, she was rehearsing a reading of The Cherry Orchard over Zoom during her final months.
After I moved to L.A., I learned and grew so much from various teachers and studios, but the last place I landed was with Jeanie. I wanted someone to take me deeper into my craft and a friend recommended I come study with her. At our first meeting, I saw a black-and-white photo hanging on the wall of her office, which was of a group of her castmates at Williamstown that included Christopher Reeve. It took a bit to realize that I already “knew” her. For a girl growing up isolated in the cornfields of Indiana, who tried to educate herself, it felt surreal to be studying with someone I had been drawn to so long ago.
My Tuesday nights and Saturday mornings in Jeanie’s Workroom were the happiest hours for me, a respite from a grind that was increasingly unraveling, as I wrestled with whether I should leave Los Angeles. Jeanie’s coaching was rigorous, thoughtful, unbelievably intelligent, and inspiring. I often sat in my seat shaking, trying not to throw up, before I stepped on stage for a scene or monologue. I felt safe to fail, which I did over and over, until those glorious moments when the work finally kicked in. She deeply and passionately valued process, which cannot be rushed, and she encouraged us to work on scenes in chunks, for long periods of time, before putting it all together. She was unrivaled in her approach to text analysis and to the physical embodiment of that text.
While Jeanie was kind and compassionate during the work, a compliment from her had to be earned. If she thought I did a good job, I could trust that I really had. That kind of integrity is invaluable to an actor. The last scripts I worked on with her were some of the most challenging pieces I’ve ever tackled. Most of the time, I didn’t think I could do it, but the fact that I found moments of success was truly a testament to her coaching and to the craft I had honed in her class. I can judge my work as an actor as Pre-and-Post-Jeanie. My family even asked what had happened at one point, when they saw the difference, and I told them, “It’s Jeanie.”
I spent my final night in L.A. attending a Preview of her production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night at the Geffen. She workshopped the play in class with us for a long time as she prepared to direct, and I was one of her readers during auditions. I loved the deep dive into that classic work and her insights will still be with me if I ever get to play Mary.
Jeanie was one of the people from my L.A. world who affirmed me even after my move back to Massachusetts. She thought I was doing exactly what I needed to for my art; not abandoning my dream but rather creating a new and beautiful version of it for myself. She told me that I often came up in her conversations. Her studio is one of the things I have missed the most and I hadn’t given up hope that I would work with her again.
In May, I received a last message from her: Just thinking of you and wishing you were around. Me too, Jeanie. I’m wrecked that we’ve lost you and so very grateful that I knew you. Thank you for being my teacher and for helping me to become the artist I always wanted to be.
FINDING AMARGOSA
This week I learned that the legendary Marta Becket passed away in January. I had no idea. I visited her opera house for the first time on Christmas Eve but her impact on my life hit back around 2009-2010.
I was divorced and had left my beloved Santa Monica for a studio in Koreatown with an actual paper-thin Murphy bed that folded down from the wall and was possibly the kind of bed you get in hell. I hated my new neighborhood, I was free but alone, I was nursing yet another heartbreak and creatively things couldn’t have been bleaker. I used to sit in the generic apartment-furnished armchair, staring out at the brick building next door, where people would literally scream out of their windows at all hours for reasons unknown. Because they could, I guess.
My mom told me about this amazing documentary she’d seen called Amargosa and I immediately ordered it from Netflix. On DVD. When I saw it, I was deeply moved by Marta’s story – one of a frustrated artist who took a giant leap into the unknown to create something that didn’t make any sense at the time. She left her metropolitan New York world behind to settle in Death Valley and refurbish a dilapidated performance hall, where she danced to a crowd that she literally painted on the walls – because there was no audience – until National Geographic discovered her.
The story of a woman without an opportunity to create the kind of work she wanted to, stepping off the grid to start living a different kind of story, spoke volumes to me. I felt the stirrings of something akin to that for myself or the idea, at least, that something else might be possible. As soon as I finished the documentary I rushed to find out if Marta was still alive and performing. She was, but she was heading into her final performances of the The Sitting Down Show because she could no longer dance and was ready to retire. I was determined to be there but a winter storm hit; those isolated Valley roads were flooded, nearly impassable, and phone lines were down. The Amargosa website warned of treacherous travel and I sadly abandoned the idea.
Several years passed. I sort of forgot about visiting the opera house although Marta remained an inspiration to me. I thought of her often, whenever I floundered around wondering what the hell I was doing in Hollywood. Every time the thought arose that I should create my own work, forge my own path, I would beat it down with resistance but then Marta would be there, like a beacon in the background. More time passed. I saw Diane Bell’s first film, Obselidia, and its scenes at the Amargosa Opera House reminded me that Marta’s legacy was still there…waiting.
Cut to December, 2016. Bone weary, shattered, burned out in every possible way…I’m in the middle of packing up my life in a limited number of boxes that I can snail-mail home to Boston. I’m finally calling it quits. A friend has come to stay and this is my camping/hiking/national park exploring friend. The one who will join me on any wilderness adventure. Each time we meet, we excitedly plan where to go next. We know we have a short window this time. We’re both exhausted. It needs to be a place we can drive to in a day and one that won’t be closed from all of the snow. Then it hits me: Death Valley. All those years in California and I still hadn’t been. They were at the tail end of a winter storm and about to get hit with some epic flooding but we had just the right amount of time to miss the worst.
We hit the road late on Christmas Eve day and drove like demons to make the show. The opera house had confirmed via e-mail and phone that there was a dancer who was going to perform that night. Then there wasn’t because she’d been injured. Then there was because they were mistaken or at any rate she was still going to perform. We didn’t have time for any pit stops. We ate snacks in the car. The two-lane road out to Death Valley Junction was pitch black with no cell service, my aging car was insistently fogging up in the rain and we’d hit huge pockets of flooding that were impossible to see ahead of time. We nearly missed the opera house because the valley was so dark but we swerved in and I jumped out to tell them we were there. There was no time for a bathroom or food or even to buy our tickets. Marta’s personal assistant was manning the door. She said to go over to the hotel afterwards to pay for our seats but, for now, to enjoy the show.
The opera house was toasty from the wood-burning stove and I couldn’t get over the rough wood floors or the detailed murals. It was beautiful. The assistant spoke to the small audience of tourists, telling us that Marta still lived on the grounds and that she was too ill to come over but that she knew we were there and that “she is happy” we were. A young Dominican dancer had been tapped by Marta to perform. She explained in broken English how grateful she was because, in her home country, the opportunity to dance was non-existent. She danced a short program from Marta’s past, including some of Marta’s own choreography. She wore Marta’s costumes – delightfully out-of-style – and there were long pauses while she changed. A little dog in the audience quietly growled whenever a new costume appeared. The ballerina danced in front of scenery that Marta painted. The faded red curtain opened and closed jerkily. The dancer’s pointe shoes were worn to shreds. The entire experience felt like pure anthropology and I held both joy and sorrow in my heart.
Afterwards we walked over to the hotel and someone opened a vacant room for me so I could finally use a bathroom. The room was scrubbed clean but old and in some disrepair. We wandered around the hotel filled with Marta’s photos and memorabilia. We were left to ourselves in the vacant gift shop. The lobby had a Christmas tree, a cat lounging on a desk, and a guy playing the guitar for his friends. Finally an employee appeared at the front desk and seemed pleasantly surprised that we had stuck around to pay for our tickets. We were starving but there was still no cell service. I asked the employee if she could give us directions to a restaurant somewhere and she told us that the hotel’s cafe was serving a complimentary Christmas Eve dinner, courtesy of Marta.
I think walking into that cafe on Christmas Eve was the moment when, on a micro level, I started to heal from the burn-out of the previous few years. People from all over the world were gathered at the counter and tables. The employees were warm and welcoming and explained the menu. When they found out we were Vegetarians they said, “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.” Even now, I cry when I think of it. To be in a place that meant so much to me as an artist, to be exploring a part of our American wilderness, to be surrounded by fellow travelers on a holiday eve…it was pure gratitude. Pure joy. I was remembering the core of who I was – the things I actually care about, the values that actually mean something to me. It wasn’t about booking a guest star or walking the red carpet or getting the next audition. It was about being in the world. Being present. Being loved.
Marta Becket changed my life because she lived hers with full authenticity. She surrendered to her art and allowed it to move her where it wished instead of trying to control or resist the outcome. She taught me that it’s not only possible to forge my own path – it’s desirable. I am forever grateful for her life and work.
mindlib 