The new movie Landline, set in 1990s Manhattan, follows life before smartphones with a dysfunctional family.
Jenny Slate stars as Dana Jacobs who suspects, along with her sister, that her father is having an affair. Edie Falco, John Turturro and Jay Duplass are all along for the ride as the cast.
This is the second collaboration with director Gillian Robespierre and actress Jenny Slate after the indie hit Obvious Child. The two visited Chicago to sit down and talk about the new work at the Park Hyatt.
Windy City Times: How is it working with Amazon Studios for Landline?
Gillian Robespierre: We are just getting started. It is very exciting. I am getting calls about it: "I saw your trailer before The Beguiled." They did an outdoor screening in Los Angeles at the cemetery Cinespia, where they showed our trailer before Dirty Dancing. That is probably the biggest screen we will ever play on.
WCT: Did you watch Jay Duplass on Transparent?
Both: Yes.
GR: His character on Transparent is so far from the character he plays in Landline that I was nervous.
Jenny Slate: I wasn't. There was something about him that was so dear, and gentle. I actually direct-[messaged] him on Twitter. I didn't have his email. I told him there was a script going his way. I really wanted him to do it.
GR: He is a great actor, and also intimidating because he is a great director. That is how he started.
JS: The Duplass Brothers!
WCT: No gay best friend this time in Landline, like in Obvious Child?
JS: No, there isn't. How could we have done that to ourselves?
Just as quirky best friend is annoying as a trope, a gay best friend can also be overused. We try to focus on our work together without being on the same repetitive ground.
WCT: How was being in this period piece?
GR: It was exciting and fun to push ourselves in new directions. Obvious Child was [set in] Brooklyn, and current times. We tried to make it as timeless as possible. As you can recall there were not too many moments where Jenny was on her cell phone, but we were in current times.
It is fun to go back, but not so far back that we don't have strong memories of the time. We freed ourselves from modern technology. The only thing holding this family together and their connection to the outside world is the landline, hence the title.
It is about a family that is not connecting. We thought there was poetry in setting it in a time prior to social media, and being able to track everyone's whereabouts.
It is a low budget, independent film so we had to make sure that every time we stepped foot outside in 2017 that we captured the slivers in New York City that still looked like 1995. City Bikes are on every single corner, and Starbucks. We had to find pockets without those.
Luckily families hang out inside. This is about internal struggles. The characters live and breathe outside the home, but we found an apartment in Manhattan that was abandoned and about to be demolished. It was intact before construction started, so we dressed it the way we wanted to with wall to wall carpeting, and a lot of VHS tapes. It was small living, with everyone on top of each other in New York City. It forms intimacy within a family when their rooms are right next to each other.
All the characters touch each other. I feel like grooming and non sexual touches are still very intimate.
JS: We wore each other's clothes.
GR: The sisters are bathing each other. There is a lot of touching. You feel that everyone cannot escape proximity from each other.
WCT: How do you create those relationships? Are there rehearsals before?
JS: We had a table read.
GR: We paired off the characters.
JS: It wasn't more than an afternoon. You have to show up to this work informed and ready to go. You can't worry about how you look. The script is gritty and has a real beating heart so your priorities shift as a performer. We wanted to make it as honest as possible.
WCT: Did you feel more comfortable because you had worked together before?
GR: What was cool about this project was when we wrote it and made our first pitch we were able to send it to Jenny. We were able to collaborate as early on as the first draft. It was incredible and rare.
She got to live and breathe Dana long before the other actors did.
JS: She was very real to me by the time we got on set.
WCT: The group looks like a family.
GR: We cast them around Jenny. John Tuturro, who plays her dad, and Abby Quinn, her little sister, all have this beautiful curly hair. It solidifies them as a family. I think Edie Falco is a believable mom.
WCT: I have heard from other actors she is great to work with.
JS: She really is.
WCT: Do you want to create a troupe of regular actors in your movies, like John Waters?
GR: I would love to meet him.
I think being on set is like a family. You are very close, and spend many hours together. It is nice to have members of the family that you know deeply. We had the same DP and editor as Obvious Child. Jenny was in every frame of that film.
It was nice to open up the family in this film for new voices and collaborators.
WCT: There was a Halloween scene with costumes. What is the craziest Halloween costume you have worn?
JS: I have a bummer one. I was a big dork and got really bullied. My reaction to that was "I don't have any friends to trick or treat with so I am going to do it by myself." I decided to be a flower coming out of a window box. I had green long underwear and a turtle neck. I took a cardboard box and made a hole in it. I had paper suspenders and paper flowers in the front. I gave myself a big paper headdress.
It was complicated but I have always been that way. I wouldn't let people in the room to see it beforehand and made a big deal about it.
On Halloween night I did the big reveal coming down the stairs. The whole thing immediately broke! The box fell to my feet where I was just standing there with green leggings, and a big camel toe. My mother wouldn't let me wear that so the only other costume we had unhand was a giant hamantashen costume from the Purim play at our temple. So I went as a cookie, but everyone in my town thought I was a piece of pizza.
JS: In fourth grade my friend came as a California Raisin. I wanted to put Jay's character in a raisin box. It was slightly cumbersome and emasculating. I wanted to put the girls in garbage bags so it grew from that. The California Raisins were big in the '90s, so it was perfect.
JS: I love a raisin box. I think it is really sexy to have legs sticking out of something. Like those cigarette boxes. You can have blue eye shadow and a bouffant. You don't have to show everything. It is Ziegfeld Follies sexy.
WCT: "Nothing beats a great pair of legs!" What are future plans?
JS: I just wrapped a movie called Hotel Artemis with Jodie Foster, directed by Drew Pierce.
I am currently making a Marcel the Shell film with Dean Fletcher-Camp.
GR: I have my second episode of the TV show Casual that is airing this week. It is my first work for hire that is not my own. I then go back to New York to do more writing.
WCT: Maybe there will be a trilogy, with a third movie together.
JS: I hope so. I am kind of counting on it!
Landline is currently in movie theaters.
