GALO: What similarities do you see between yourself and Emma Roberts’ character, especially when you were younger and wanting your art and film to be noticed? Like Amy, did you ever have a job that you’d consider to be undesirable employment as a young adult?

SC: First of all, I really, really relate to Amy, more than I admit. I’m very focused on what peoples’ responses to things are. I think that’s a really dangerous place to be that leads to unhappiness, because when somebody does love something you do, it’s so transient, and when somebody doesn’t, you take that to heart. So yes, that’s something I really related a lot to, and has been a struggle in my life, as an actor and a filmmaker. You make work for an audience and you project yourself into the future to see what people are going to respond to, and hope that they’re going to have a good response to it. That’s a way that I relate to [Amy] a lot.

I actually had a job when I was 19 when I was living in Rome and I was transcribing pornography. I had a family friend who spoke English pretty well, but not very well, and he hired me and paid me kind of a lot of money to come into an editing room where there were American pornos that needed to be translated into Italian. These were full-on, hardcore pornographic American movies. I would look at footage and write down what was being said. It was pretty graphic. That was a job that was alarming and weird.

GALO: [Laughs]

SC: I forgot about that. I never really thought about that in relation to Adult World. But that was a job that I didn’t really love.

GALO: Rat Billings quotes Samuel Beckett in the movie and says, “If you want to make art you have to fail,” and then tells Amy to “continue to fail.” Is this advice applicable to you as a director or to people working in the film industry as a whole?

SC: Yeah, for sure. In fact, Rat adds to that. He says, “The artist’s job is to feel better after that.” I think about that a lot. It’s really scary to make movies because there’s so much money involved. It’s difficult to be an artist and have a trajectory as an artist where you’re allowed to fail and allowed to learn from that failure — especially in the film industry, because people expect immediate success from something. I think failure is such a huge part of learning and learning how to make better work. I think of all the movies that I love that really inspired me, and none of them are perfect. There are failures inherently wrapped up in them. I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week, because it’s the first time I’ve showed Adult World publicly and I really care what people think. Failure is a huge, gigantic part of success.

At one point, John’s character says, “If everything was special, nothing would be special.” And I think that’s really important. I don’t think we’re allowed to do that anymore. If you watch all the great directors’ work, if they make a lot of work, some of it is good, some of it is not. Being able to fail and fall on your face and find your voice, that’s an important process of being a successful artist and having integrity. That’s something that’s been taken away from the art of making films and I think it is really applicable to filmmaking. I want to be able to have the space to fail and learn from those failures. Sometimes, disastrous failures can be beautiful and great. An artist can find their voice through that. It’s an important message, especially for a young person trying to experiment and find out who they are.

GALO: Adult World made its world premiere last week at the Tribeca Film Festival. Can you talk about what the reception has been from the New York audience and what the overall experience has been at Tribeca? 

SC: Our premiere was on Thursday night [April 18th], and there were a thousand people in the theater, which was daunting. The movie played really well, and I’m very sensitive to that. I feel like I’m overly hyper-vigilant, like a weird meerkat, in terms of who was laughing and what the response to the movie was. There were all sorts of surprising things people laughed at I didn’t even expect. I couldn’t be more happy. I feel like it’s especially great to have the movie premiere at Tribeca. A lot of my dramatic filmmaking education came from living in New York. So having the movie premiere here and getting a good response has been lovely, wonderful and really fun.

GALO: Emma and John were at the comedic heart of the film. They seemed to have a really great on-screen chemistry. Can you talk a little bit about your experience working with them, maybe the differences in acting style and if it was easier or harder to work with a particular one from a directing standpoint?

SC: I don’t think Emma has ever had an experience like this before where she was able to be this free. She was very, very prepared and knew every single one of her lines that were written in the script to a tee. And I think it was a challenge for her to be challenged by John, who was quite the opposite. He would say, “This is very deliberate and very purposed.” I would work with John every night before we shot and we would deconstruct the script and decide what we could bring to a scene to make it bizarre and colorful and challenging for Emma’s character. I think it was really good for both of them. They grounded each other in really interesting ways. John was very free, almost like a jazz artist playing with different notes. Emma at first was a little alarmed by him going off-camera and off-script and doing whatever he wanted to do, but she was so responsive to that and I think she gave her best performance because she was challenged by that. I really trusted them and they trusted me, and that made whatever magic you see in the movie palpable. That was a result of how great they were to work with.

GALO: What would you say was the most rewarding part of working on Adult World?

SC: Working with the actors. I loved working with them, and watching these really great actors cut loose and bring themselves to the movie. That was what was most inspiring to me.

“Adult World” opened on April 18 at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. “Adult World” will be screening on Friday, April 26 at the SVA Theatre (located at 333 West 23rd Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues) and on Sunday, April 28 at the AMC Loews Village 7 Theatre (located at 66 3rd avenue, at 11th Street). For ticket information, please visit http://www.tribecafilm.com/festival. 

Featured image: Film director Scott Coffey of feature film “Adult World.” Photo Credit: Blair Mastbuam.

Cincopa WordPress plugin