Just as Parker Posey was at Sundance in the ’90s and Greta Gerwig was at SXSW halfway through her life, no one embodies the current sensibilities of the South by Southwest Film & TV Festival quite like Rachel Sennott. With a dizzying but knowing, somehow seriously cynical personality, consistent but undefeated, she is at the festival this year with two new films.
Described as the story of two strange high school students who start a fight club to recruit cheerleaders, “Bottoms” was co-written by Sennott and fellow “Shiva Baby” actress Emma Seligman. The Saturday night premiere is one of the festival’s most anticipated events. Written and directed by Ally Pankiw and starring the Storytelling Contest, I Was Funny is the story of a young woman struggling with trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder and showcases Sennott’s talents from a previously unknown dramatic angle.
After visiting the 2018 festival with the short film version of the terrifying comedy Shiva Baby – the feature film played at the 2020 festival whose live show was canceled in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic – Sennott also attended last year with her scene-stealing performance in “Bodies Bodies Bodies”.
For a pre-festival phone interview, Sennott was in charge of what she’s calling Tennessee, Random, where she’s filming the upcoming Holland, Michigan, directed by Mimi Cave and starring the impressive trio of Nicole Kidman, Gael Garcia Bernal, and Matthew Macfadyen
She was very excited to return to SXSW.
“It really means so much,” Sennott said. “When I first went there I think it opened my eyes to making indie movies and I also realized that filmmakers are just people who wanted to do something with their friends. It was really inspiring for Emma and me and really motivating to write Bottoms.
“And I felt that last year for Bodies, where I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ I just want to see every movie with this room full of people,” Sennott said. “It completely changed the experience where everyone wanted to watch a movie and laugh and cheer. The energy, that’s something I’ve really missed in the last few years. I like watching these kinds of movies and I feel like both ‘Bottoms’ and ‘I Used to Be Funny’ are meant to be shared with other people.”
Although the film version of “Shiva Baby” missed an in-person festival premiere, it became an arthouse hit in the pandemic era, earning Sennott a Gotham Award for Breakthrough Performer and winning the John Cassavetes award from the Spirit Awards, the low-budget awards. award movies.
While “Shiva Baby” and “Bodies Bodies Bodies” have firmly established her comedic persona, Sennott is energetic, if a little eager, to showcase other aspects of her talent at this year’s festival, starting with shared honors as the authors of “Bottom”. .
“This is the first movie I’ve written that’s been made,” said Sennott. “There’s an added pressure because all of a sudden you’re not just worried about what people think of your performance, but every line where you think, ‘Did you like that? Did you like that?’
“For ‘I Was Funny’ there are a lot of funny moments in this script but there are also more dramatic moments and I think it’s about serious stuff and not that I didn’t but I think about that special level or this I have no subject.”
In “I Used to Be Funny,” which premieres Monday, Sennott plays Sam, an aspiring stand-up comedian who is forced to babysit after a traumatic incident and young girl Brooke (Olga Petsa) uses her because she quits, away is. Told with a bold, stripped-down storytelling sensibility, the film draws on Sennott’s comedic persona as she finds herself exploring new emotional depths.
“I wanted to show what is taken away from women. Her sense of humour, her connection to the world, her joy, that’s been taken away and nobody starts that way,” said Pankiw. “The world just makes them that way.
“When you meet people with PTSD or traumatized people, you often come across this version first, like the earliest iteration of Rachel in the movie,” Pankiw said. And it’s such a shame that most people don’t get to know the person they were before their trauma. Rachel does an amazing job of giving the character so much vitality and so much charm and such an inherent sweetness and you can see all that and that she was all those things and that she had pure potential. It’s like an inverted form of attractiveness.”
Pankiw, who is making her screen debut with the film, has directed episodes of shows such as “Shrill” and “The Great”, as well as many music videos, including Muna’s “Silk Chiffon”, starring Phoebe Bridgers. She first saw Sennott standing and remembers thinking, “This girl is so funny and brilliant and charming. I just took them away in my mind for future reference.”
After seeing “Shiva Baby” at Outfest while trying to get the project that would become “I Used to Be Funny” off the ground, Pankiw learned that both she and Sennott were represented from the same agency, WME.
“I think I wrote the character a little harder, and there’s just something sweet about Rachel about her, she’s just heartbreaking,” Pankiw said. “It was such a miracle that we got her, and she also brought out a lot of the element in the character that I felt she really needed. I often joke that she made this movie for me and now I before she would be hit by a bus.”
Sennott’s character in “I Used to Be Funny” is an aspiring stand-up comedian who has struggled to perform since her traumatic event. Sennott and Pankiw worked together on the stand-up exercises in the film. Pankiw recalled that before the production, Sennott rehearsed in the kitchen of the apartment where she lived in Toronto, using a spatula as a microphone while she worked on the material.
For Sennott, playing stand-up as a character was a new challenge.
“Honestly, it was so wild,” she said. “I write jokes about my babysitting job and life in Toronto or Canada or whatever. And I did it in front of real people. There were two girls who knew who I was and they kind of said, ‘Are you Canadian? ‘ After the show. And I said, “No, I’m a liar. I’m just a liar.” “
For “Bottoms,” Sennott not only teamed up with her “Shiva Baby” co-star in Seligman, but also with Ayo Edebiri, with whom she had a short-lived Comedy Central series, Ayo and Rachel Are Single. Seligman and Sennott wrote the role in “Bottoms” with Edebiri in mind and cast her before they had even completed a draft of the script.
“Finally getting to the place where we all made it together was like ‘Whoa,'” Sennott said. “Ayo and I did so many little skits together in school and we did this little Comedy Central series for no money and we performed in basements and stuff to perform together again, but actually in a movie on a budget, which we arguing with each other and their stunts were very cool.
“Not to sound cheesy, but I was like, ‘We did it! Was here!’ said Sennot. “We were in New Orleans when the stunt coordinator kicked each other in the face. We made it.”
For Pankiw, Sennott’s real talent is how she makes it seem like she’s doing nothing at all, the naturalistic encounter atmosphere she brings to a role.
“What she’s doing is making people believe that what she’s doing is effortless, but she’s an incredibly skilled technician as an actress,” Pankiw said. “And I think because people have mostly seen her in comedic roles, unfortunately sometimes there’s a misconception that if someone is like their character, it’s really easy. But I think she’s more of a chameleon than people know.”
Originally from Connecticut, Sennott went to college in New York City, where she began her career, and despite living in Los Angeles, she still feels strongly identified as a New Yorker.
“I feel like I’m giving New York away,” Sennott said. “I really love LA. It’s growing on me and I have to tell you about the shopping experience in LA, unbeatable. Sorry New York, but shopping in LA is great.”
From the success of “Shiva Baby” to filming her first scene with Nicole Kidman — “A f-legend,” she gushed — to prospects, Sennott tries to take stock of how much has happened to her and her career happened. Happened years ago…the reaction to “I’ve Always Been Funny” and “Bottoms.”
“Honestly, I’ve felt like COVID these past few years. My emotions are like a slowdown,” Sennott said. “Because so much has happened in ways you’re not aware of in everyday life. And then it happens in these random little bursts where I feel it in those moments.
“I feel grateful [“Shiva Baby”] I got this online foundation from this community of mostly young women who supported the movie,” said Sennott. “If I ever see a 25-year-old girl with a Twitter account say, ‘I loved your movie,’ I say: “You’re the reason someone saw it, so thank you.” “
Source: LA Times