In the summer of 2003 Joe Swanberg was just another floundering college graduate. He had no job and no savings, and he was living with his parents in Naperville. Many of his friends were moving to Los Angeles and New York, but he had a girlfriend he didn’t want to be away from. Though close to his family, he worried about “getting stuck,” about not “breaking in.” He promised himself that by the fall he’d move into Chicago, even if he had to work at McDonald’s.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The story is about a young woman (Winterich) who’s trying to salvage a friendship-with-benefits with an ex (Pittman) and her roommate (Swanberg), whose repressed sexual desire for her is channeled into an audio project. This consists of interviews with other twentysomethings who talk openly about breakups, family anxieties, and other issues germane to the main characters’ lives. Swanberg says these interviews are “genuine”–real people talking about real life–and in a strange but fruitful hybrid of documentary and narrative techniques, they serve as the “score” for several scenes. (Swanberg says he borrowed the idea from a Super-8 short Williams made in college.)
Festival screenings have been well attended, and the movie has gotten a fair bit of press attention for such a low-budget entry. Reviewers and bloggers talk about the film’s refreshingly unflattering take on nudity and sex–Pittman rolls on a condom, Winterich scrutinizes her body in a mirror, Swanberg masturbates (and ejaculates) in the shower, Williams trims her pubic hair while seated backward on the toilet–and its equally intimate images of mundane details like crumpling clothes and spongy paint rollers, the indelicate frying of eggs and the lazy application of deodorant.
In December Swanberg pitched Winterich. “I can’t pay you. It’s going to involve nudity. It’s going to be emotionally difficult. I don’t know how it will end because I have no script. I can’t even guarantee that I will finish it or that it will go anywhere if I do finish it.”
Dentler’s name finally appeared in Swanberg’s in-box: “Would you consider SXSW?” Swanberg freaked out again. “I was like, ‘Holy shit, what does that mean? Is that an official invitation?’” He called Kris. She said it was a good sign. The Thanksgiving break prolonged his agony as he waited for Matt’s response to his unqualified yes. When it came he immediately called Kris.
“There are a million filmmakers just like me,” Swanberg says, “so my only hope is to be a little bit smarter and little bit more creative and hope to stand out from the pack. It’s hard to tell if I’ll be able to do that.”
