By Danny Peary
Director-writer-actor, Ingrid Jungermann’s feature debut isn’t like any other film. This unusual hybrid recalls a couple of creepy, erotic horror classics – Dracula’s Daughter (1936) and the original Cat People (1942) – as well as Jungermann’s introspective, razor-sharp comedy web series, The Slope (in which she co-starred – as “superficial, homophobic lesbians” – with co-creator, Desiree Akhaven) and F To 7th, which she is now adapting for the US cable channel, Showtime.
Both web series were set in the LGBT community in Brooklyn, where Jungermann lives, as is Women Who Kill, which won the Best Narrative Screenplay Award at the recent Tribeca Film Festival and is earning the filmmaker much acclaim. The premise from the press notes: “Commitment phobic Morgan (Jungermann) and her ex-girlfriend, Jean (Ann Carr), are locally famous true crime podcasters obsessed with female serial killers. There’s a chance that they may still have feelings for each other, but co-dependence takes a back seat when Morgan meets the mysterious Simone (Sheila Vand of A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night) during a food co-op shift. Blinded by infatuation, Morgan quickly signs up for the relationship, ignoring warnings from friends that her new love interest is practically a stranger. When Jean shows Morgan that Simone may not be who she says she is, Morgan accuses Jean of trying to ruin the best thing that’s ever happened to her. But as she and Simone move into commitment territory, Morgan starts to notice red flags – maybe Jean was right and Simone isn’t as perfect as she thought. Morgan and Jean investigate Simone as if she were a subject of their podcast, and they uncover disturbing clues…”
FilmInk spoke with rising star, Ingrid Jungermann, about her unique movie before she won the award for Best Narrative Screenplay at Tribeca.
Identity seems to be a big theme in your web series. Your character, Ingrid’s search for identity seems reasonable. But now you write in your Director’s Statement, “My neurotic interrogation of identity.” Why is it neurotic?
“I think about it obsessively. I knew what it felt like to be on the inside a little bit because I was an athlete. That was helpful. But I never felt quite right in any group – especially when it was divided between male and female because I felt like I was in between somewhere.”
What sports did you play?
“I grew up playing tennis, but I played softball, soccer, everything. But I played tennis since I was four. So that was a big part of my identity as well. Gender was certainly a major part of my trying to figure things out. I didn’t know what that meant until I was making F To 7th. I didn’t know until I started to dive into the work that way. It showed up, but it had been in the back of my mind.”
It’s done comically but was it painful?
“Absolutely, because it’s based on…my mother and I have a good relationship now, but we struggled sometimes about my sexuality. She’s Jehovah’s Witness and just doesn’t believe that my sexuality…”
She believes it’s a choice to be gay.
“Yeah, exactly. She thinks that I was talked into it by someone, or that it was because of my childhood, and something that happened that pushed me in that direction. So, for many, many years, I battled myself. That makes you internally homophobic. Even though it’s okay right now – it’s in the press, people are opening up about it, it’s a great conversation – I think that it’s going to take a long time for LGBT people to feel okay with themselves because we have been taught for a long time that what we are is wrong. So, the work that I make is trying to process that through accepting myself for who I am.”
What’s interesting about your web series and Women Who Kill is that in the world your characters live in, almost everybody is gay. Is this intentional on your part, or is it actually the way that you see the world?
“It’s intentional because I wanted the characters in the movie to feel like they were in a bubble. They definitely live in their world with blinders. I want to make movies for women, with women in them. It’s really important to me, not only because I’m just drawn to their stories, but because that’s what I want to do. So if that feels like a bubble, I’m happy. For Women Who Kill, I was going to have everyone be a female including all the extras, to really push that forward, but then I opened up to having men.”
Is Women Who Kill a horror movie? Or is it an extension of the comedy in the web series?
“It’s darker than the web series. The tone is sinister and wicked. I wouldn’t call it horror, but there are definitely elements of horror – and comedy. When you combine those two elements, that’s how I feel in the world. I’m torn with being a cynic and an idealist, so I’m constantly struggling between those two things. I see beauty in the world, but I also see darkness. The two sides of me. It’s very night and day.”
I read that you wrote this script eight times…
“I was just honing it. I’ve written features before, but this is the one where I felt like I learned how to write a feature film. I understand that when I’m finished with my first draft that I’m going to start re-writing from page one. That’s what takes so long. It takes years to figure out what all these subconscious thoughts mean. The subconscious stuff is in the first draft, and then you start picking it apart and making sense of yourself and processing all those thoughts and making it a story. So I think that I understand how to write a film now. I’m drawn to commercial films too, and I want to make films that are fun and entertaining and that hopefully mean something to someone. I’m not interested in just telling a personal story and not including the audience. I don’t understand the point to that.”
You’ve worked with all of the film’s actors previously, but not Sheila Vand…
“She was a dream. I got really lucky there. I spoke with her agents. They knew my web series, and they read the script. They knew that this part was what she would want. She read it and wrote me this beautiful email. She just got it and responded to Simone and understood her in ways that I couldn’t even understand. When we met for the first time, as soon as she walked in the room, I thought, ‘I found this person.’ She just became Simone. I was looking for an Anjelica Huston type…the type of women that I grew up watching but that I haven’t seen for a long time. She is of that calibre. She’s got an old Hollywood feel, and the light loves her. It’s just incredible to see a person with that energy. I can’t wait to see what she does in the future.”
Did you have long conversations with her?
“Yeah, we talked a lot, but there’s a point where I think some directors have a tendency to over talk. I would prefer to under talk it. Casting is everything. New filmmakers can become insecure and overcompensate. When you cast someone, you should let them do their job, because that’s where the stuff is going to come from, not from you telling them.”
In this movie and in The Slope, you and Ann Carr have exactly the right rhythm…
“That’s great. She’s easy to have that with. She’s a sketch comedy, improvisational actress. In this film, I see her like Diane Keaton in Manhattan Murder Mystery, although that is a little more slapsticky than I wanted to go.”
Annette O’Toole [Smallville, Cat People, Halt And Catch Fire] plays a serial killer that Morgan and Jean visit in prison. It’s the best that I have ever seen her, apart from playing Ingrid’s mother in F To 7th.
“Wow, that’s great! Those roles are so different. For the web series, I was looking for my mom, and Annette was submitted. I remembered her movies. We talked on the phone and connected.”
You play the straight person, yet your character says funny things…
“Right. In life, we never laugh at the painful things. We take them very seriously, and that’s what I’m interested in as Morgan in Women Who Kill and Ingrid in F To 7th. They take everything very seriously, and that makes it funny.”
Do you consider yourself an actress?
“I consider myself a director who acts. I don’t consider myself an actress because an actress’s whole focus is creating the character, but since my focus is split in three directions, I don’t consider myself an actor first. I consider myself a director first.”
Women Who Kill will be released later this year.
