John Noonan
Filmmaker Robert Greene’s (Actress) latest documentary follows indie actress Katie Lyn Sheil (House of Cards) as she prepares to play Christine Chubbock, a news reporter who committed suicide live on air in 1974; her story now largely forgotten.
How did you first come to hear about Christine?
“It was 2004, five years before I made my first feature and I was going through ideas and stories. Sean Price Williams, who shot the film, had heard of her. And we were like ‘we should make that film one day’. And for me, I was immediately struck by the aspects that I later realised, what had been interesting to me, were that it had been a performance; the immediately contradictory idea that she was making a protest against blood and guts, but doing the most blood and guts television thing ever. And the fact that she had written her own newscast for her suicide. All these weird things were entry points into the story, but ultimately the thing that I clung onto was that I wasn’t allowed to tell that story. Mainly because I felt that there was no way to tell a straight forward documentary without going down avenues that I wasn’t comfortable going down.
“So the details of her life were such that it was totally inadequate. There was no way of knowing her, without hunting down her family and interviewing them for hours. And even then we wouldn’t know. So, I basically felt like that this was an impossible film to make. And that was what I thought about for ten plus years. And so, the angle for [Kate Plays Christine] came out of the desire to make that impossibility the point of the movie.”
You said it’s impossible to know who Christine was and why she did what she did without talking to these people. And in the film she almost becomes an urban legend.
“Ultimately the movie is more about the story than it is about her. And yeah, it sounds like an urban legend when you say it. Because most people have never heard of her. Many more people have heard of her now. It’s the kind of thing where, like many urban legends, it’s your reaction to the story that’s as important as the details of the story. And so that’s really what the movie ultimately becomes about. We know that her brother still lives and doesn’t want to talk about it. He’s been very clear about not talking about it. And so we went to Sarasota (Where Christine lived and worked) and see what people have to say about it. And they didn’t have much to say.”
Was Kate always in your mind to be in the film?
“Yeah, Kate is an old friend. We’ve known each other for ten years or so. The idea came almost fully formed. Kate will try and play this role, and in that process we’ll be watching this person, who is one of the most intelligent people I know, think her way through this impossible task. There was a moment where schedules were looking like they would not line up and so people were like ‘Maybe you can get someone else.’ And I was like, ‘We’re not having anyone else in this role but Kate!’”
You say the idea was fully formed…
“Well, fully formed meaning the basic premise. The basic idea that she would play Christine in these reenactments that weren’t meant to work on their own. They were meant to fail. That was the initial idea, but we discovered so much. Half the people we interview in the film, we had not met till we were down there. So it was very much a documentary in that process.”
So, you didn’t have a journey plan?
“We had three or four interviews lined up already, and those were going to be our starting place. And we knew we were going to end with the reenactment of her last moments, but we didn’t know what that meant. We purposely left that open ended, and at some point what had to be, became clear. Like the final scene, people think Kate plays overdetermined, but the truth is that is Kate’s moment. She’s saying exactly what she felt.”
You were surprised then with what she did?
“Yeah, we had discussed what it could be, but she scripted those words. Lashing out the way she wanted to lash out. It was the most intense thing I had filmed by far. Sean and I were nauseated. It was like five or six takes and you only see three in the movie, but it couldn’t have been any more intense. Not knowing what was going to happen, or if it was going to work at all.”
The footage of Christine’s final moments does exist, and you chose not to use it. Do you think it would have changed the film and the way you did the ending?
“I don’t know. I know Kate wouldn’t have watched it. Sean and I would have watched if we had the opportunity. But we didn’t push for it. We knew who had it, but that was never the goal. I mean it probably would have changed, but in ways I couldn’t predict.
“But the idea of painting ourselves into a corner, and getting ourselves out was kind of always exciting. It’s kind of like a high wire act. Emotionally we felt we got trapped by the thing we were doing. And it was like, how do we wriggle free of this? And we just had to let it play.”
In the scenes where you talk to people, like the gun shop owner who speaks to Kate and Kate as Christine, how did you approach them?
“I said, ‘we’re making a film about an actor who is trying to play this role.’ And I would try to explain it and people would be like, ‘yeah, yeah. I get it. Just film. I don’t want to hear you talk about it anymore.’ (laughs) It’s my method of getting people to say yes; just keep talking till they say ‘Shut up!’
“But with the gun shop owner, it was very much like ‘We want to talk to you about being a gun shop owner.’ Particularly in this day and age in the US, where that’s a profession that’s misunderstood, in his eyes. And he wanted to talk about his ideas, which a lot of them are in the movie. And he didn’t know anything about Christine Chubbuck, so I purposely told him ‘there’s something this story, but I want to wait to tell you and get your reaction on camera.’ [The shop the man owns is where Christine bought the gun she killed herself with.] And then we’re going to do this reenactment. I didn’t tell him they were going to be next to each other. But nevertheless, he was reenacting, he was acting and also he was an interview subject.
“In the movie it’s nice, because he was collaborative in every way. He wasn’t feeling like he was in a gotcha situation. Whenever we brought up Christine Chubbuck he was like, this is what I think. He got to speak his mind.”
With the reenactments of Christine’s life, they’re very overwrought.
“Absolutely. In the movie, Kate says they’re very 1970s soap reenactments. The idea was that the movie-within-a-movie, the reenactments, whatever you call them, the idea was they had to be failures. They had to not work. Because one of the main things we’re trying to say is that the instinct to make a story out of someone who has committed suicide is natural.
“It’s natural to think you can understand if you just connect the dots. But I think although it’s completely natural to do so, it’s completely inadequate. The details of someone’s life does not explain the darkness and the severity of it. So those reenactments had to invoke that failure. We went for over the top melodrama. Not because melodrama is necessarily a failure but because it conjures a sort of emptiness which I is what I think you feel when you’re depressed. You’re flat.
“Also, I wanted the documentary stuff to feel like fiction and the reenactments to feel like a documentary in certain ways. And that’s not just to play with form, although that’s fun and I love the conversation that can create. It’s just when you’re questioning whether it’s real or not, I think that drives you into the psychology of the situation in a unique way. So when you’re questioning Kate and you’re questioning whether she’s being as authentic as you want her to be because she’s in a documentary, you’re questioning in the same kind of way.”
At one point she does say to camera that she’s only doing something because you’ve told her to, which does set alarm bells ringing about what else you’ve ‘set up’.
“Which is the same of every documentary. Documentary subjects know that they’re subjects, so they’re performing. When you put an actor in a documentary, people think that’s inauthentic. But really, what an actor is doing is externalising the internal. That’s their job, they’re an artist. So, it’s not being inauthentic, it’s artful. So, it raises the stakes.
“Documentary making is process orientated. It’s always sort of provisional. It’s always a lurch towards something. It’s never in control in that way. So I just try to find new ways to bring out that control and the instability of the whole thing. I think that’s exciting. If you’re watching this thinking her wig is terrible, then that’s great! Because then you’re thinking through the situation and hopefully we can do something with that thinking. Also, the ultimate goal is not about having these academic discussions about what is real and what is not. It’s more to put you in the mindset of someone who has depression, and the feeling that everything is constantly swirling. The constant questioning; the constant search to grab onto something.”
Kate says during the film that she becomes quite protective of Christine. Were you the same, or did you become protective of Kate?
“I’ve been protective of Christine from the beginning. That’s why it took so long to make the movie. But then, I was protective of Kate, but also pushing Kate. And Kate was protective of Christine but also knew where we needed to go. The collaboration with Kate was on a higher level than anything I’ve ever done. We were protecting and pushing at the same time.”
There are several moments where she’s clearly frustrated with you.
“She was really mad at me! (Laughs) I was asking her to play herself, play a version of herself, and be herself. And then play Christine in a bad reenactment. And then ultimately try and find some kind of spark of Christine in herself. It’s an impossible task! I think she felt really exposed by the process.
“So I’d go ‘Action’ and she’d say ‘you didn’t give me direction.’ And then I’d give her a really dumb direction because I’m a documentary filmmaker, and she wouldn’t know what to do with the dumb direction. She would do something and feel miserable about it, and I’d be like ‘perfect!’ (Laughs) It was a constant dance of these things and I hope that comes though when you watch. If it’s just a director and actor having fun, it’s bullshit. It’s got to put you in a mindset.”
Finally, you’ve mentioned that the film Tootsie was an influence. Can you extrapolate on that?
“(Laughs) That was because of Sean. Two weeks before we shot, he was like ‘You’ve got to watch Tootsie!’ And I was like, ‘That’s stupid.’
“But his reasons were that you don’t overly see Dustin Hoffman getting up every morning and becoming Tootsie. It’s like you see the opening credits as her getting ready and then the movie cuts from him to Tootsie. There’s something about that suddenness that takes you into this mindset of, ‘what is identity?’ Has he become another person? Is it just a good acting job?
“Then also there’s the speech at the end. I mean, Christine Chubbuck gave a speech at the end of her life, Network gives speech after speech, and Tootsie gives a speech. It used to be like this thing in the movies where everything would lead to the speech. And it was always more ambiguous than you thought it was going to be. I was kind of attracted to that. I think in independent film there’s so many moments where someone walks off frame, and it’s like, ‘I don’t know what happened.’ It’s super ambiguous and I think that is so boring. Rather than that, I want to nail something down, which is what happens at the end of the movie. Tootsie, Tootsie, all the way! (Laughs)”
Kate Plays Christine plays at the Melbourne International Film Festival on July 31 and August 2.
