Interview: Jennifer Westfeldt
Although a successful working actress in theater and television, Jennifer Westfeldt was never one to rest on her laurels and twiddle thumbs in between jobs. Though she claims not to be a writer, Westfeldt won the hearts of audiences, critics, juries, and the media alike with the two feature films she’s penned: Kissing Jessica Stein and Ira & Abby. For Westfeldt, the projects were motivated by a desire to maintain creative momentum and give herself the opportunity to tackle unexpected roles, not necessarily any burning need to make a statement. But aiming to deliver the best performance possible has imbued her films with a contagious passion that fueled collaborators, investors, distributors, and of course viewers.

Kissing Jessica Stein was co-written by Westfeldt and co-star Heather Juergensen when both actresses found themselves out of work and wanting to stay in practice with their craft. The story was first conceived as a theater piece which sparked industry interest; after a proposed studio deal fell through, the determined performers decided to go forward with the feature film on their own. Despite the lack of funding and film experience on the part of the actresses, producers Brad Zions and Eden Wurmfeld signed on as did Wurmfeld’s brother, director Charlie Herman-Wurmfeld (who has since done the Legally Blonde franchise). With a tiny budget, an unconventional storyline, and much gumption, Kissing Jessica Stein was completed. It became a festival favorite, winning both the Audience Award for Best Narrative and a Special Jury Award at the 2001 Los Angeles Film Festival, and acquired distribution by Fox Searchlight. Juergensen and Westfeldt were also nominated for Best First Screenplay at the 2003 Spirit Awards.

Ira & Abby — which also won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2006 Los Angeles Film Festival — was the result of more downtime for Westfeldt, who returned to a steady stream of work in theater (she was nominated for a 2004 Best Actress Tony Award for her performance in Wonderful Town) and television (she’s a series regular in the ABC sitcom Notes from the Underbelly). Here, she discusses the circumstances that got her involved in making another low-budget indie film even while she swore she’d never do another and why she’s discovered, after all the ups and downs, that this could be the best way to get a movie made. Magnolia Pictures will release Ira & Abby in New York and Los Angeles theaters on September 14.

Kissing Jessica Stein was a pretty solid success. How did your experience with it carry over into the making of Ira & Abby?

Jessica Stein was made on a shoestring and certainly it came together brick by brick and stair by stair; it was very unglamorous shoot but a very heartfelt passion project for everybody involved. I think in some ways Ira & Abby had a similar way of coming to pass; we also raised the money and it was a slightly bigger budget but not much...just the fact that using a union crew in New York doubles your budget anyway and these days you kind of can’t get away with a non-union crew if you have anyone even slightly recognizable in your film. It wasn’t all that different; it felt bigger but not a lot bigger. It still felt pretty mom-and-pop in terms of the fact that we were raising all the money and begging and borrowing and stealing favors for locations. I shot in a number of relatives’ and friends’ apartments for Ira & Abby and the gym in the film is actually the gym that I worked at and had that very job in. It still felt very grassroots in a lot of ways, very independent in its way. There was obviously no studio involved; a small group of us was involved with every decision. It’s the only way I’ve made these two films; I don’t really have an experience other than this, so it’s hard to comment on how else it could’ve been.

So even after Kissing Jessica Stein was winning awards, got distribution, and was doing decent box office, did you not have studios saying, “We’ll pick up your next script”?

I didn’t have a next script; I didn’t know that I would ever write another script. I’m not really a writer! It’s something that I’ve dabbled in but mostly I make my living as an actress — that’s what I’ve always done. So this script coming together was again sort of in spite of myself. Brad Zions kept asking, “What do you wanna do next?” and I was like, “I don’t ever want to do this again! It’s incredibly hard and exhausting and takes years of your life!” Certainly if you knew at the beginning what you know at the end about the process of making an independent film you’d probably never do it — it’s so crazy and all-encompassing it’s like having a child! And so I certainly wasn’t eager to do that again, yet this script came about.

Then I was not available to be in it for a while because I was on Broadway and then I was doing TV stuff. I had done a pilot that didn’t go — it was May of 2005 and you find out in May what shows didn’t get picked up and the one that I’d done didn’t go. I suddenly said to Brad, “I have a window now. If we get this together, this is a window that I have.” So we started raising the money and we were shooting in early November. That was actually after a long time of the script being out there, but I wasn’t available and we didn’t have someone to play the lead role for the guy and studios weren’t going to do it unless probably I wasn’t in it or whatever. We just decided to go forward and in fact it was pretty quick after we decided to do it, raising the money and getting going. Everyone said, “That’ll never happen — you’ll never shoot it this fall!” and we were like, “We can, just watch us.”

Again, with every film when you’re raising money, you have no idea whether the rest of the money’s gonna come. You have no idea if you’re going to be able to finish the film. It’s always incredibly stressful and exciting and guerilla. But that was how it came to pass.

You just said you would never write another script, so why did you have another script ready to shoot when you had that window of availability?

Well, Brad kept saying, “What do you wanna do?” and I said, “Nothing — I have nothing to say!” (Laughs) And I did then have an idea about a year after he was bothering me about that: I had gone to all of these weddings that year with my boyfriend and at the same time we were having a number of friends divorce who were like 28 or 29. Being a child of divorce and all that, I remember spacing out in one of these weddings where these idealistic, beautiful vows are said and we all cry and I was feeling like, “It’s really a coin toss whether or not this is going to work statistically and yet we all show up and the vows are always the same, they’re always ‘til death do us part’ and ‘forsaking all others’ on some level, and yet really it only works in half the cases.”

So it’s funny to me that we do all say it and we do all try and there is no awareness of the statistics in any of these ceremonies. I just kind of had this notion, as I was watching this wedding ceremony, of a couple who got married and divorced several times whose vows kind of degenerated each time and became more practical and promises they could actually keep. That was the initial idea for the film; that was the jumping off point.

And why did you decide that that had to be a film versus something on the stage or anything else?

I don’t know; that’s a good question. I guess I hadn’t written enough to know enough about what medium this would be best for. I guess I feel like I’m in the world of TV and film and that’s where I live now, you know? And I guess on some level I really loved the process of making an independent film because you do really have the freedom to cast who you want and explore something that you want to do and do it in a way that has some integrity and possibly get to play a role that you wouldn’t normally get to play.

That brings up a compelling scenario to consider, which is the fact that yes, you do get to tell your stories from your very specific point-of-view and you may not necessarily be thinking about the fact that people will or will not go see it or a studio will or will not pick it up — success on that level. You’re just thinking about what you want to do. But perhaps it ends up being successful on a business level because your heart was in it from the beginning.

Right. You never know with art; you never know what’s going to be embraced, you never know if the timing is right or what you’re up against or if press will respond. That’s the stuff that’s completely beyond your control. All you can do is the best job in the moment and try and express something truthfully and assemble great people to do that with you. I feel in terms of this film what’s been heartening is the audience response — it’s been so great at film festivals and whatnot. I’ve seen that all over, so that feel like success for me on some level. Whether or not it will make any money or anyone will see it or critics will like it or whatever, that’s all out of my hands. But I guess I’m someone who it’s important to me that audiences respond — that’s my top priority and that’s been a really nice thing to see with this film.

In between getting the idea for Ira & Abby and that window of time when you went off to make the film, you were part of the Los Angeles Film Festival’s Fast Track program. Why did you decide to take it through Fast Track and what was your experience with it?

They loved the script and said, “We wanna help this script get made in any way we can.” We’ve had a long relationship with the Los Angeles Film Festival, so it seemed like something great to do. I think they were probably frustrated with us because we didn’t end up being on a very fast track. (Laughs) The script kind of got sidetracked and then I got busy. You know, that happens; unfortunately, if you’re an actor, you’re always going to be working on the thing that’s most real and you can’t be single-minded and single-focused about a project knowing how hard it is for films to come together and everybody’s windows to come together and the money to come together. I support myself as an actress, so... If you only sat around trying to get your movie made, you’d be in the poor house. (Laughs)

That’s true, but there’s this idealistic stubbornness that a lot of artists and independent filmmakers come to it with.

And that can work when you’re like 21 but not so much later on. Just from the May through the next February, being 100% on Ira & Abby 24/7, not available for other projects and being in pre-production and raising the money, then being in post-production and coming back to L.A. and being in the editing room all day, I was like, “I need a television job yesterday!” It’s hard not to make money for eight or nine months at all — no money. Literally, I was beelining to pilot season and leaving the editing room to go get a pilot and was lucky enough to get one that went to series. But without that, I’d still be recovering from that process financially. My boyfriend and I were subletting our house when I got back from Ira & Abby because we just couldn’t afford it. The reality is that it’s very difficult to make an independent film because it does require so much of your time and energy and you really need to do other things to support that habit, the indie film habit.

Do you feel like you have greater confidence given the fact that you’ve hit home runs with both of your indie films and this habit of yours seems to have paid off?

I never have a tremendous amount of confidence in myself; I think I’m probably my own harshest critic and yet there is a real joy and freedom in making an independent film in New York with all the people you want to be with and casting the best actors for the role, which almost never happens in studio films. I mean, there’s a lot of wonderful actors in studio films, but I never think, “The very best person comes in and wins the part.” It so rarely happens that way; it’s all about who’s bankable or “Who of these five people would you like?” or whatever. So there’s a real joy and freedom and sense of creative expression that comes from getting to do something akin to the way you do a play because it’s not all about finances. It’s about the art of it and that seems very worth pursuing. Then, whether or not you’re ultimately successful with it, if the product is embraced or not, that’s beyond your control.

So I think there’s two levels of confidence: there’s just being happy and proud of the work you’re doing in the moment and making the best film you can make given your resources, given your budget, given your time crunch, given all those things. And I am proud of both films in that regard and I think they were both really great experiences. Succeeding on another level and being confident that you can compete in the marketplace and whatnot is so different and I don’t feel like I have the answers to like, “How do you make the film that is the breakout hit of the year? How do you make the film that becomes My Big Fat Greek Wedding? How do you have this film catapult you to another place in your career?” All that stuff I feel like I have no confidence about and no insight into because I think so much of it is what’s in vogue and what’s the timing and what’s the zeitgeist and how many marketing dollars do you have and all of those questions that you can’t possibly control.

But you can control a part of that for yourself, which is tied into a great point you brought up: How one can help their career with these passion projects. Does that ever enter your equation when you’re deciding whether or not to go forward with one of them or as part of the writing process for either film?

Sure! I mean, I would say with both films there was that hope. As an actor, unless you’re really famous, you have to kind of take the jobs that you get — within reason; I’ve certainly passed on projects. But, I don’t have the freedom or the position yet in this business to just pick my projects. I think that’s a very rare set of actors who get to do that. So making these films has been an attempt to fulfill myself creatively when I haven’t been able to always be in something that I love and I’m proud of or a role that I think is great. So certainly that’s part of it.

I’ve been lucky to have some great jobs like being on Broadway with incredible people. But it’s not like you’re always working on something you love and it’s not easy to always be doing juicy parts; that doesn’t happen — again, you always have to support yourself in this business and you don’t know how long a certain job will last or you do a pilot and it doesn’t go — you know, all the things in this business that are just the slings and arrows of being an actor in the world. So certainly there’s the hope of doing maybe a more complicated role in a film than one that I could get in the studio marketplace. I do feel like both roles were fun for me to play in different ways and they were opposite roles in a lot of ways.

Are you getting any more diverse roles offered to you as a result of Kissing Jessica Stein and Ira & Abby?

I’m starring in a television show right now so I’ve been kind of off the market because of that; I go back to work in three weeks for the next four and a half months. I hope that come January when I’m free again there will be something exciting around the corner.You never really know. Right now I’m working, so that’s good — I’m lucky. But I’d love to do more film roles. I’d love to do a studio film. I’d love to work with more directors and more people I admire. Whether or not this will help, who can say — I hope it will!

And if it doesn’t, maybe you’ll end up writing yet another script and shooting it during your next window of downtime.

Yeah! You never know where your artistic journey’s gonna take you and who will see your film and who might respond to something. I definitely think it’s always great to keep your own projects going and also be in the marketplace. I try and go back and forth in that way and hope that it adds up to something.