Lena Dunham

Lena Dunham claims she accidentally method acted her way through award winning feature film Tiny Furniture by eating snacks and lying around in bed. She gives us tips on successful filmmaking, such as how you should avoid feeding cast and crew pizza and start feeding them salad. Practical lessons aside, Dunham doesn’t fail to simultaneously reflect on the more abstract nature of creative partnerships, feminism, terrible twenty-something relationships, and the strange vulnerability of putting an unflattering version of yourself on screen. While discussing Tiny Furniture, she remains remarkably candid, emerging as a filmmaker more uninterested in appearing put together than in honestly documenting the messy, often humiliating process of self discovery. Despite all this, Dunham jokes that she still hasn't learned the romantic lessons her own movie is trying to teach.

TRANSCRIPT:

Tania Ketenjian:
Hello and welcome to Sight Unseen. My name is Tania Ketenjian, and I'm your host. Sight Unseen is a half-hour weekly program featuring candid conversations with the artists and thinkers of our time. This week on the show, filmmaker Lena Dunham, whose latest feature film, Tiny Furniture, won the Best Narrative Feature award at the South by Southwest Film Festival. Earlier this year. It tells the story of Aura, a 22-year-old recent graduate who moves back home, a large Tribeca apartment where her sister and mom live, as she struggles to find her footing and her path. Along the way, she does what many early 20-somethings do in New York: go to bad art shows and parties on fire escapes, work dead-end waitressing jobs which can sometimes be humiliating, revisit challenging childhood friendships, and experience an all-round sense of desperation as they try and get a handle on what their future holds. The remarkable thing about Tiny Furniture is that it was written and directed by Dunham, who also stars in the film in a semi-autobiographical role. Along her are her real-life sister and her mother, who plays herself for the most part, a well-established artist and photographer named Laurie Simmons. The film is shot beautifully and is so well made that you would never think that it was created by a 23-year-old, which was Dunham's age when she wrote and shot the film just over a year ago. Now, Tiny Furniture is hitting theaters and is finding its stride, as is Lena Dunham, who has two feature films under her belt, the first being creative nonfiction, and several shorts. I spoke with Lena Dunham when she was here in San Francisco when her film played in the prestigious Mill Valley Film Festival. We spoke about making a feature-length film, her age, and feminism amongst other things. Please stay tuned.


Lena Dunham:
I've always been sort of into long form, like even when I wrote short stories as a little kid, I'd always be like, "I'm writing a novel!" Like I always wanted to do the thing that seemed a bit like the biggest thing. So this is actually the second feature I've made. I made one while I was still in college, which is 60 minutes long, so it's sort of somewhere between a short and a feature, and I'd learned a lot from that experience. Then in the year after graduating, I was working on shorter form stuff, short films, web videos, web series, and I was also struggling to make my living in the way that all recent postgrads do. And I just kept having these small kind of tidbits come to me, which I'd write down in an outline, sort of almost, I'm someone who sort of gets through things by thinking like, this could be a movie someday. And so I was taking these, you know, things that were little, little kind of humiliating incidents that were occurring in my life and writing them down. And then one day it was sort of like, okay, I'm ready for this to become a feature. Like, it's sort of starting to make sense to me. Sort of like, I don't know what shifted. And I wrote it in sort of this, about exactly a year ago, sort of this like 5-day writing frenzy. And then, you know, I had these great producers at— The year before, I'd screened my film at my first feature at South by Southwest. My first feature is called Creative Nonfiction. And I'd met the people who would end up being the producers and the DP and the editor and a couple of the actors. So I knew I had these specific people that I wanted to work with, and as a result, I just, you know, I knew I had these people I wanted to work with, and as a result, I just like asked them, and it was this magical pocket of time where they were available to work. So this movie came together with a kind of ease that I doubt anything I do will ever have again.


Tania Ketenjian:
One of those meant-to-be kind of situations. How rare or how special is it to really find that group that gels and works well together to make something happen?


Lena Dunham:
I think it's really rare, and it's something that I cherish. The working relationships I have with the people that I made this movie with, I cherish, because I think it's almost like if you ever— it's almost like if you meet, have a really great boyfriend, and then you're kind of like— like, I feel like people fall into that phenomenon where it's like you're dating someone really great and you're like, they're really great, so there must be other really great people out there too. But like, it's really hard to find someone who you get along with, are attracted to, and, you know, can imagine spending an excessive amount of time with, don't dump them. You know what I mean? Like, that's how I feel about creative relationships is like it is until you've had a bad one, you don't understand the importance. Until you've had a bad creative interaction, you really don't understand the importance of these ones that have such an ease to them because no creative relationship is without conflict, but that's part of what makes it… That's part of what makes me love film is the little conflicts that occur every day because it creates something so much more interesting and multi-layered than if I were allowed to go into a room and work without any friction.


Tania Ketenjian:
What were things that you learned from Creative Nonfiction that filtered into making this movie? What do you feel like you learned from the making of that?


Lena Dunham:
Well, it was interesting. I edited that film, which I've never— which I haven't done since and which I hope not to do again. But it was a really important thing that I did it. And I think one of the things I learned is that in Creative Nonfiction there'd been a lot of dialogue and a lot of really interesting scenes, but there'd been sort of like those private moments that let you really know who a character is didn't really exist. It was sort of like talking vignette to talking vignette. And so I was very conscious just on a narrative level of trying to write in moments where you, Aura's the protagonist of Tiny Furniture, and I wanted to make sure that there were moments where you really understood who Aura was and why she was behaving the way she was based on how she behaves when she's alone. Finding ways, finding some more transitional moments that can kind of make the film feel more fluid and less episodic. Then just sort of the experience of making, trying to put together a feature narrative, both to sustain it, to sustain it creatively and narratively, but also to think about, I learned don't feed everybody pizza, give them salad, it's better. Little ridiculous independent film lessons, and then at the same, things about, you will save money ultimately by buying better, healthier food and more of it than like trying to sate everybody with pizza and cake or whatever, which will then make them tired. And I also learned— I think I learned a lot about, you know, I had before that had no understanding about camera and angle. And so I think without having done that, I wouldn't have been able to have the relationship with my DP that I did where I shared my opinions about angles and shot listing and all of that.


Tania Ketenjian:
Well, it is really beautifully shot, Tiny Furniture. I mean, it, it's just It's so— it's certainly not what you would expect from a first or second film from a young woman. I think we have these expectations of youth, and those are shifting now because younger people have more access to things, and it allows them to advance much more quickly. But I'm very curious to know how your age fits into all of it. I mean, how do you feel as— I remember, I was just thinking now, Martin Scorsese put out Mean Streets as his sort of graduate film, and it became this incredible success, and It must be quite an experience.


Lena Dunham:
I mean, it is, and I think in terms of how it's shot, I think I was so lucky. My relationship with my DP, Jody Lee Lipes, was, you know, it's one of the best things ever to happen to me, and he's so incredible, and I learned so much from him about sort of like how you can, how low budget doesn't have to mean kind of gritty and shaky, and I think he has a really different idea about how to work within low budget constraints than a lot of other DPs do, and so that was really incredible for me, and I think he, he was really focused on trying to bring it out of the kind of traditional way that you might think a movie about post-grad malaise would look and sort of give it a sort of more polished feeling because it's almost like that allows people to take the emotions in the film more seriously.

And I know what you mean about expectations of youth and I have them of myself where I would always kind of go, well, if this is a disaster, at least I'm 23 and it's like I can make that excuse. But it is a really remarkable feeling to make something so early in your artistic career, and you know, not that this is a Mean Streets level of success, but it's been really amazing. A lot of people responded really positively to the film, and I've gotten to show it to a lot of people, and I think the only thing to remember is just not to feel that, is that like, you know, we're always growing and changing as artists, but especially in our 20s, so not to, so I just always remind myself not to feel at all penned in by what I've done so far, and feeling like I need to sort of stay true to a specific voice because anything I write will be my voice because I can't help it. So making sure that I remember I'm allowed to stay limber and that I'm not kind of chained to the kind of thing that I've made before.


Tania Ketenjian:
So the story is that you, although it's, I mean, it's another character, but you're in it, so it's so hard to not see it as you. And I'm sure that must be— you're saying, I know what it— What does— when I say that, what comes up?


Lena Dunham:
Well, it's, you know, it doesn't frustrate me because it's so, it's so clearly like, you know, there's so many autobiographical elements. And I'm, you know, I'm depicting a character who's very clearly has a lot of similar traits to me and has a lot of similar circumstances. But it's so interesting because I also feel when I watch it, I also feel so far away from her in certain ways just because our lives are so— looking at her life, maybe my life was more reminiscent of that at a certain point, but definitely doesn't feel that way now. So it's so interesting. But it's— and it's, it's almost like having this document of yourself from another time. But, but I also was very sure— I was very careful with my mom, with my sister, with me, with all the people who are playing kind of versions of themselves, that we should really be playing characters. That felt important to me, that, that we didn't just rely on something that felt kind of like documentary style.


Tania Ketenjian:
And so the story is that you've just graduated from school and you've studied film theory and you're sort of, you're not sure what you're gonna do next. So you're in New York, you're living at home, and all kinds of different experiences come up. When you were jotting either experiences or memories or thoughts down in your book, what were some of those things that you jotted down?


Lena Dunham:
Well, I think definitely the experience when I worked in a restaurant, that was a really profound experience for me just because, you know, a lot of the stuff that I jotted down from that typed into my little Word document from that experience didn't make it into the film, but that was this fascinating thing of seeing all these people sort of in this whole, like, not everybody who works in a restaurant is this way, but certain people in sort of a holding pattern, like doing something that isn't necessarily their first love as they kind of try to figure out what is their first love or really pursue what is their first love but aren't yet making money at it. And so it was this kind of interesting, almost like purgatory for young people. And so there were a lot of moments there that were inspiring to me. There were a lot of moments that occurred in my house, just sort of misunderstandings with my mother, was sort of like she would feel like I wasn't respecting what it meant to be an adult and take care of the house. And I felt like she wasn't respecting what it meant to be sort of like between adulthood and childhood. And it's just sort of our perspectives hadn't quite lined— it was like we were— we just quite hadn't quite lined up yet. And so it was sort of like watching that, watching us sort of like move towards each other. And it was sort of like we were either going to figure out how to exist we were going to coexist peacefully or I was going to figure out how to get out of there in a serious way. And we ended up figuring out how to exist, coexist peacefully.


Tania Ketenjian:
And so right now you're coexisting peacefully?


Lena Dunham:
Totally. I mean, I love living with my parents and I think now the fact that I'm so busy and that I'm working all the time, that they are also really busy, it's like, you know, it's more just like being adult roommates than it is like— except it's like being adult roommates except when I get sick and then my mom will bring me soup. Like that kind of— right, I'm sure that it won't last forever, but right now it's such a pleasure to me to be able to, like, you know, at the end of a day of writing, or even if I've been out all day, you know, location scouting or doing auditions or whatever, to come home to these people who just— it's almost like the relationship is so comfortable and so wordless. It's, you know, it's the best thing to me. It's like being married, sort of. I don't know. I wouldn't know. I'm not married.


Tania Ketenjian:
So you say your parents, but we never see your dad in the film. There's no dad presence. I'm sure so many people must have asked about this.


Lena Dunham:
Well, it's interesting because I, you know, I did it for two reasons. One is that I knew my dad was not going to want to act in the movie. And so because he's just a much— he said he's actually— I put him in one thing and he was great, but he's just— he's a really private person and it's just not interesting to him to see himself on camera in that way and to explore his life in that way, which I completely respect. But it seemed ridiculous to sort of have my mom and my sister and then some dad stand-in actor. And I also I was really interested in the idea of exploring female dynamics without, like, I feel like so many films are defined by the absence or presence of a male character, and it was interesting to me to look at these women interacting with each other totally without the sort of like male gaze being present. And so my goal was not just not to have a father, but to never even talk about where he went because it was almost like that just didn't matter, and what mattered was these women and the way that they had learned, the sort of the ecosystem of their home.


Tania Ketenjian:
I mean, and I think that really worked. I mean, there were times where I thought, oh, where's her dad? Or did her mom get a divorce? Or, you know, just briefly, but then my attention would go elsewhere. So it's semi-autobiographical. So what were the things that became highlighted about who you really are while you were making this? Because I'm sure when you're sort of acting out of yourself, you start discovering more deeply by the contrast things about yourself. So what things about you did you really learn?


Lena Dunham:
You do. Well, it's like it was my friend Jemima, who plays Charlotte in the film, who's such a funny and wonderful actress. She said to me in her saucy British accent, which I can't properly imitate, she was like, this character is like you if you weren't at all funny or at all attractive. So I was like, that was the best line, which is basically like this character is a lot of the most kind of lost, frustrated, lazy, bratty parts of myself and hopefully of all of ourselves. And that was what I was feeling as I was tapping into a certain— I mean, I literally felt like it's— this sounds crazy, but I felt like when I was making the movie, I was almost going method in a certain way where it's like at night when I was done shooting, I wasn't doing what I'd usually do, which is like read a book, watch a movie, write, be productive. I was kind of like eating snacks and lying around in bed. Like I was sort of getting back in touch with the part of myself that doesn't put— like I put a lot of pressure on myself to work all the time, and I was getting back in touch with the part of myself that isn't that way.


Tania Ketenjian:
Well, I have two questions. One, we're all concerned with image regardless of our age, but when you're younger, I mean, I think back to when I was 23 and thinking, oh, is this going to look nice? And am I gonna— do I, do I seem okay in the world? It's very vulnerable to not show those sides of yourself, to actively say you're not going to do that.


Lena Dunham:
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because it is, it's an active choice to look not that sexy and to act not that, she doesn't ever, I don't think the character ever seems stupid. She just doesn't seem, she doesn't seem unintelligent. She just doesn't seem like she's tapping into her potential, if you will, and she's reacting a lot to people around her. And so that was interesting. It could be, sometimes I'd stop and I'd go, God, this character is such a drip. I can't believe I've written this character for myself who's just reacting to everyone around me, but at the same time, I feel like a lot of people have felt that way before, like sort of like that they were, that they were just sort of like this, this non-person or something. And I think, you know, the character is— she's very apologetic and she's very— she just doesn't yet really feel like she has a right to ask for what she wants or really like a right to exist.

And so, you know, it's almost— I've said before, it's almost more natural for me though to try to play a character like that than to try to play a character who is owning her sexuality or is really confident in the world, or is— just because there's a way that those are easier parts of yourself to tap into and they're almost It's almost less, it's less scary for me in some way to make that choice. And, you know, since I've looked at it and gone, God, you know, this is maybe if I like, there was a guy I really wanted to date, I wouldn't want him to see this movie before he met me in person because that girl's not necessarily like, you know, the, like, like I always say, people always like, those guys in the movie are such jerks. And I'm like, yeah, they are jerks. But I also really wouldn't want to date that character either. Like, she's lost and she's not taking great care of herself and she doesn't seem— the issue isn't what her body looks like or what her, you know, or what her job is. It's that she doesn't seem happy. And so that was an interesting— and that was an interesting challenge. And, you know, I don't really ever think of myself as an actor, but as an actor, to try to make that— try to make that character compelling and not make her just feel like this sort of like black hole.


Tania Ketenjian:
I guess those guys, they are jerks for sure. Of course, obviously they are. But I mean they're totally the type of guys that women date in their 20s. I think it's really important for people to see it, who are around that age and who are in that situation, and see, oh my god, that is exactly who I'm dating and he's horrible.


Lena Dunham:
Yeah, I mean, here's the thing is that I wish that, so like, I would love it if girls would see the film and go, oh my God, I've been dating complete assholes and I'm gonna do a 180 or 360 or whatever. The only, you know, I even wish, sometimes I make jokes like, I'm like, I should have learned a lesson from my own movie because I still don't have that figured out and it's like really, It's like, I know enough to comment on it, but it's real. But there are certain, you know, dynamics of relationships in that age range that are just impossible to avoid, whether you're dating the smartest, most lovely guy. It's almost like, in a way, what I was trying to say in the movie was like every 20-something person has this lost person. Every 20-something woman has this lost person in her, no matter how together she seems. And every 20-something guy has this asshole in him, no matter how together he seems, just because It's sort of almost like the nature of the beast or something. So these are like, you know, these are sort of like the archetypal spirit or something of being that age.


Tania Ketenjian:
And figuring it all out. I mean, and just sort of testing all your boundaries like little kids do too. They test their boundaries by being out of control, being mean, being rude, whatever it might be. And they're just sort of like, is this okay? No, it's not okay. Or does this feel right? No, it doesn't feel right. But you also just said a moment ago that you are very committed to, you know, working all the time. I'm curious to know what you define as work. I mean, I think the definition of work shifts for artists. It certainly doesn't diminish. I think it's important to remember that for people that are artists and are listening to this or are creative. What's work?


Lena Dunham:
Well, I think it really depends, but like I was telling someone recently, I very rarely do anything that's just like quote-unquote for fun. Like even if I watch a movie or watch a TV show or go somewhere, it always sort of feels like it's in service of like it's research for something that I'm doing. And I think work is also like, I need, I mean, I know that I need a significant amount of time in my life just to sit around and kind of like do nothing and let the spirits take me. That's the biggest thing I forget to do sometimes is like if I'm promoting this movie and trying to get another project together, I forget about the time that I need to just kind of like ruminate because that's when thoughts come to you. And like, I spend a lot of time like sitting in the shower listening to music just because that's when I can that's when I can really, you know, touch base with myself or something. And so I think it's really important to remember that, that that's, you know, that is its own form of work.


Tania Ketenjian:
In the film, you said to your mom that you just want to be as successful as she is. And I think particularly for your generation and for, you know, for even my generation, most women that were growing during the women's movement are successful and therefore they've had children who hope to be as successful as they are. And what's that like?


Lena Dunham:
Well, I think with my mom, I always found her really inspiring, and I also always found it really terrifying, the idea that I wouldn't have a— you know, I found her life— like, not everybody sees their parents' life and wants it. A lot of people see their parents' life and go, oh, I want something different, and I don't know what it is yet. And so it's this interesting thing to see the life your parents have and go, I'd be happy with that. How do I get that? And sort of you have this example there of like what a satisfying life could be. And then you just want to live up to it. And so that's sort of, that's sort of been fascinating to me is that my goal wasn't to kind of exceed my parents, but just to sort of have like, they've had this, they have a great marriage, they have children who they are really close with, and a very like a comfortable existence doing the thing that they love to do. So I was kind of like, that is all I could ever want for myself. And so I think, you know, it's been, it's really amazing. I didn't realize until recently that not everybody has a mother who they want to emulate. Some people have mothers they wanna kind of go the other way from. But I do think it's true that if you have a mom who, you know, who kind of came of age during the women's movement, that they have— it's almost like they have a better idea of their own worth than someone my age does as sort of like a post-feminist child or something.


Tania Ketenjian:
Interesting. So you think that, say, your mom at your age had a stronger idea, and you actually tap into your mom at at your age. So you feel like she has more of a sense of her potential, and her generation has more of a sense of her potential as a woman than your generation does?


Lena Dunham:
In some way, because I think that it was more front and center, the idea that like we are women and we are going to do anything that we want to do was in some way more evident and more front and center to— I mean, obviously I'm not like a gender and women's studies historian, but from what I gather, that dialogue was happening, whereas now I feel like a lot of my friends kind of think like feminism, our moms figured that out, and now everything's all evened out. And I can report to you from the front lines of something that that's not the case. And I feel really lucky that I've made a movie that's, I believe, to be a feminist film and pretty distinctly pro-ladies that is being well received. And I feel lucky about that. But the industry that I work in is really predominantly male. And those battles aren't done being fought. And so it's interesting because I feel like a lot of people think, our moms handled it. But we're still handling it. And we still have to handle it.


Tania Ketenjian:
So your next step, are you really thinking of a new project now, a new film?


Lena Dunham:
I am, well, I'm actually, I'm working on, I'm about to go into production on a pilot that I'm doing for HBO, which is really fun. So I'm working on that as we speak. I start shooting in, I start shooting one month from Monday. So that's sort of my next move. And that's been really, really exciting. So I don't know if it'll get picked up to series, but it's an amazing opportunity. And then I'm also writing something else. So I've been— and I finished a script with a friend of mine, Rye Russo-Young. So I've been managing to stay busy, which has been good because I love promoting tiny furniture, but when I'm not actually making something, I feel very useless.


Tania Ketenjian:
So just like your mom said in her journal, that she just, you know, she truly feels— I don't know, I guess she feels most right when she's creating something.


Lena Dunham:
Absolutely. I really— that's why I included that in the film. I found it profound and I found it inspiring, but also just I felt like she had expressed an exact sentiment that I was having.


Tania Ketenjian:
Those were the words of Lena Dunham, writer, director, and lead in her feature film Tiny Furniture, which is currently hitting theaters. To learn more about Dunham's work or her films, please visit Lena, L-E-N-A, Dunham, D-U-N-H-A-M.com. To hear this or other interviews that have aired on Sight Unseen, please visit theunobserved.com. My name is Tania Ketenjian. This is Sight Unseen, a half-hour weekly program featuring candid conversations with the artists and thinkers of our time. You're listening to Resonance 104.4 FM, the UK's first radio art station.