► Interview with Rona Mark, Director of The Crab
First grossing out the EIFF in 2008 with her debut feature Strange Girls, writer/director Rona Mark returned this year to present her second feature, The Crab, a twisted romance which centers on Levi, a bitter college professor with hands grotesquely contorted by a physical disability. Things look up for Levi when he falls in love with an understanding woman who also has a disability, but she happens to be his best friend’s girl. He becomes more and more desperate and debauched as he tries to win her affections. Brig´s Garry Gallon caught up with Rona to talk about the new film.
Brig: Hey Rona, So where did the idea for the Crab come from?
Rona: Well there’s two strands of that: the plot ideas and then there’s the thematic content ideas. After the failure of my last film, and other failures that I won’t go in to, I began to realize that the American dream wasn´t really working for me, this idea that if you work really hard you can achieve anything, because I had worked really hard at something and achieved nothing. And I thought that there must be other people like me who find it really annoying to watch films that reinforce that idea all the time. From a thematic side, that’s where I came from. As far as the lobster claw thing, we’ll I’m from Pittsburgh, and there was a very famous carnie, Brady Stiles, who was known as ‘The Lobster Boy’, and his family murdered him because he was a really abusive bastard. So I thought it would be a good way of physicalizing the problem that this guy, my main character, has. But if you’ve seen the film you’ll know it’s not an issue movie, it’s not about a guy dealing with his disorder. As far as the stalking the girlfriend thing, I think that when I was 15, I stalked a guy…You know, I really liked this guy and I was following him around all the time. But yeah at some point in your life you realize that you can’t make people like you…
Brig: Oh so you were the stalker?!
Rona: I’ve been both stalker and stalk-ee in my lifetime… (laughs)
Brig: Ah because in the film, the character of Jane is a female academic (Rona is also a professor in a film school), and I thought that maybe there was a bit of you in that character and that you had had someone crazily stalk you…
Rona: Well, I’m (main character) Levi; I’m Jane; I’m not really Lucas; I might have been a little bit of Courtney when I was younger…How’s that?! (laughs)
Brig: Very Insightful! Guy Whitney was really great as Levi, what qualities did you see in him to cast him in the part?
Rona: Well, we saw a lot of men for the part of Levi. You know it’s a really demanding part, a really complex and layered character. He’s intellectual, he’s really angry, he’s supposed to be funny, and I wanted someone who could do all that, and most people just couldn’t. Most people were just across the board not confident enough to carry the role. So we ended up going to this woman, this actor, and she brought in a bunch of friends, just some people that she knows, other actors, including Guy. And we did the first reading, and it was really angry. And I was like ‘okay so I know this guy can go dark, and he can get deep and all that stuff, but can he be funny?’ Because funny is one of those things that I don’t think you can learn, if you don’t have it, you don’t have it. So during call-backs the casting director asked him ‘You know this is supposed to be funny?!’ And he came back and did another that was maybe a little less angry and a little more hostile and passive aggressive…So yeah he is a funny guy.
Brig: Had he much acting experience before The Crab?
Rona: He’d done one short film, and some theatre. He trained in an acting school and everything, and he was really serious about it, he really worked to make that character feel real.
Brig: He was really great. I especially loved the part where he throws himself into the window at the university; his facial expression is just great…
Rona: Yeah he literally threw himself into everything. He threw himself into the window; he threw himself onto people he was fighting with, he threw himself on the ground…He used to be a basketball player and he hurt his knee, but he kept playing until his knee was completely blown out. So now he can’t play and he’s become an actor. But at the end of all our shooting days, he’d be limping, because he has terrible arthritis in his knee. But he was that committed, you know? He’s not acting, he’s not faking it, he’s doing it.
Brig: I heard, I think because you told me, that you were initially looking at some bigger names for the title role, so why did you decide to go with an unknown in the end and not one of those people?
Rona: I never really cared about it, you know? At the time there was someone involved in the project who kept thinking it could be bigger, and I couldn’t care less about it, I just wanted to do the film. What happens is, if I would have tried to attach somebody, the whole process would still be going on and you wouldn’t have seen that film you saw yesterday. It means you have to send the script to an agent, and the agent has to read it, and that could take months. And then if they decide they like it they think about whether they could make any money on it. And then they might go to the actor with it, but that would take another couple of months for them to read it and decide whether they want to do it or not. And it’s just ridiculous, I know people who’ve had scripts for ten years they’re not making because they’re waiting to attach name talent. Which they think will guarantee a return on investment. It’s this sort of received indie wisdom that I just hate. We’ll personally I don’t have the patience; I just want to make films. And there are plenty of great actors around, I’d be happy to just discover someone like Guy Whitney, you know what I mean?
Brig: Yeah and Guy Whitney is actor who really should be discovered….
Rona: Yeah, he can act!
Brig: The film seems more technically accomplished than Strange Girls… Did you feel more confident as a director this time?
Rona: Well, the problem with Strange girls with the direction was actually the production. There were so many production problems on Strange Girls that I constantly had to cut shots that I needed, I constantly had to compromise the direction because of the production. That’s why…I guess you’re referring more towards technical and camera stuff than performance stuff?
Brig: Yeah, I´m not begin critical, but yeah I guess I meant more about stuff like the cinematography being a bit more even here?
Rona: I had two cinematographers on Strange Girls…Yeah, because part of the problem I had with the production of Strange Girls was the Director of Photography, I hated that guy! He was such a dick, and by the end of the first shoot, because we had two shoots, I couldn’t even make eye contact with him I hated him so much. The problem being he wasn’t lighting it the way I wanted him to, he kept giving it this shitty TV look, you know? I was like ‘ I know you even have to light film to make it look unlit, but it looks weird, this looks like studio television...’ So we got rid of him and I got the guy who finished it the way I wanted, but we already had half the footage. So we ended up cutting a lot of that footage, which is why some of the pacing is strange... Strange Girls is a less perfect film, but it has a lot of good things.
Brig: Yeah for sure. That explanation makes a lot of sense.
Rona: Naw it doesn’t matter, none of that stuff matters to the audience: they just get the movie they get. It has to stand on its own. I can’t stand there every time I show the movie and say ‘excuse me, I really hated my DP, he ruined the movie…’ It doesn´t matter.
Brig: In The Crab, and in Strange Girls as well, there are a lot of scenes that are just shot on the streets of the city, did you have a lot of difficulties with that location shooting?
Rona: Well, the great thing about shooting on the streets of New York nowadays is that you don’t need any permits at all. And it’s such great production value for no money, which was great. We didn’t pay a lot for the locations; I think we paid for one of the bars, the other one I think we got for free… But yeah it was a bit of legwork. There are so many great free locations that make the movie look like a million bucks, so I figured I should use that. That’s the thing with low-budget film-making… I think a lot of people will think the cinematography is good, but I really think people will mostly respond to is effective locations.
Brig: With the scenes in the zoo, I wanted to ask about the goat…
Rona: His name is Garfunkel…
Brig: Ha-ha, really? Well, with the goat, when Jane is playing with him was that just the actors keeping control of the goat, or did you have someone there to keep control of it…
Rona: Well, it’s really easy to control goats if you just have food in your hand.
Brig: Ah-hah okay…
Rona: I mean with Garfunkel…The reason we know the name of this goat is that he’s a particularly friendly goat, the people at the zoo we’re like ‘Oh yeah, Garfunkel will participate…’ But yeah we were there early and Garfunkel was out running around, very happy. So yeah it was pretty easy… Then again, petting zoo, you’ve got real-life animals…ha-ha.
Brig: There´s like a lot of twisted sexual humor in The Crab, and in Strange Girls, too, and I wanted to ask you…
Rona: What are you going to ask me?!
Brig: Nothing really personal, don’t worry...Just, when Levi’s having sex with Courtney, and he’s got a pillow over her head, and she thinks it’s really sexy and kinky, but he’s just trying to block her out…Where do you get that stuff from?
Rona: (laughing) Well, that one I got from when I was in High-school. I had this friend, and we used to take bus to school together, and she had a friend who was dating an older guy in college, and I remember her telling me on the bus, “She’s such an idiot: he has sex with her with a pillow over her face, and she doesn’t know why.” And I was like horrified cause I was a teenager and all that sex stuff is so scary, and as I got older I’ve been in situations where I kind of wish I’d had a pillow over someone’s face cause they’re so loud or doing that annoying porn-talk or whatever…So, somewhere between that…I thought that’s gotta go in there!
Brig: Ha-ha, just need to ask that…
Rona: I’m glad you did,
Brig: With The Crab I kind of perceived a shift in tone, like it was less out to shock, there was less trepanning (like in Strange Girls)…
Rona: (laughs) We’ll yeah it’s not a horror movie.
Brig: Yeah, it’s just I wasn’t sure where The Crab was going, like in Strange Girls I knew it was going to end in murder or something really dark, but here I found the climax in the end to be quite optimistic…
Rona: Really?! You found it optimistic?
Brig: yeah, I thought so! Just by that with those kids, and maybe he was on his way to redemption, but then again maybe not…I thought it was definitely open, if not overtly optimistic… Did you not see it that way?
Rona: Well I didn’t but I can see that people do. I did leave it a little vague. I don´t think he’s going to be much different (after the end); because I don’t think he learned anything. I think he already knew what his problem was, and just decided not to do anything about it. But he is a human being; I guess that’s what I wanted to show at the end. I know the audience thinks he’s all bad… I mean, I present him as a really nasty character, and then at the end I show a moment where he’s unguarded, . I was also sort of playing on the idea of the romantic comedy, because in some ways it follows that formula, but it’s not romantic, at all…
Brig: Yeah I loved that you did kind of follow that formula, in kind of twisted way, but didn’t feel the need to give it a happy ending.
Rona: Well, I don’t want to use the term romantic comedy too much because it’s a little misleading about the tone of the film, but there’s this way in romances where at the start the guy may like the girl who’s out of his league, but in the end he gets the girl he should get. I thought here it would be funny if that woman here was like a six-year-old, like the only woman that could understand him is a little girl.
Brig: What are you planning to do with The Crab next? Are you planning to take it on the festival circuit or try to fight to get it some distribution?
Rona: Yeah, all those things, but I’m not really sure what’s next at the moment. I was trying to get it ready for this festival, that was my deadline, and I haven’t thought beyond it because I just wanted to see how it would go down.
Brig: And if The Crab does really well, if it were to become your ticket into studio cinema, do you think you would take it, or are you quite happy where you are?
Rona: We´ll I don’t aspire to mainstream cinema, it’s not like a goal; I’d like to keep just doing what I’m doing. But it would be nice to get paid, you know. It’d be nice to make a living doing what I love.
Brig: Obviously with studio work they´re not going to let you make a film as original as The Crab, as they’d probably want you to hit certain beats, but would you ever considering doing something bland and awful, for money to fund another project?
Rona: Sure, why not. Yeah, for-hire work. I’ve done all kind of things for day-jobs in the past, I was a proof reader in a law firm for money, you know? You do what you’ve gotta do. I’m still so in debt from funding Strange Girls that I have to.
Brig: Final question; In the birds-eye view of things do you think that your films would have a different view if directed by a man?
Rona: Probably, I guess they would have to, right? It’s funny you should say that because when I sent the script to actors, people would always say they thought it was written by a man. I’ve heard that many, many times. In some strange way I think I know what they mean, and I think they mean it as a compliment, I get it. But I dunno; I’ll leave it for the audience to decide. I feel like I have the Rona Mark perspective…
marketing & advertising opportunities click the media pack button.