Patrick McGraw
In late March I took to walking obsessively to Midtown every day; up Bowery and past Union Square to Bryant Park, before tracing my way back down, as if walking could relieve me of strife. Heading south one day my artist friend, Jon, texted me asking if I’d seen Betsey Brown’s movie, ACTORS, which was doing a run at The Roxy that weekend. I told him I hadn’t and when he offered me a ticket, I said I would go. I ended up not going, not talking to Jon for two months, and not hearing about ACTORS until a couple of weeks ago when I was asked to interview Brown for Heavy Traffic.
Ostensibly ACTORS is about a fictionalized Betsey and her rival actor brother (played by real-life brother Peter Vack), who starts crossdressing to bolster their range of characters, in the process becoming much more famous than Betsey, much to her duress. But really it’s about the tracking of a mental unraveling, with the “characters” and Betsey’s constant attempts to control and alter reality being representations of her anxieties, making it feel like an autofictitious therapy session, like other movies made by Brown and Vack.
Our late wunderkind editor, Marcus Mamourian, did some interviews for Heavy Traffic in a way that only Marcus could. Now that our first physical issue is out, we plan to run more interviews on the site, this being the first of them. Like works in Heavy Traffic, ACTORS focuses on the almost inflated style of a scene and its stand alone meaning, instead of plot. Also like works in Heavy Traffic, the movie focuses on somebody under the weight of their own mild hysteria due to seemingly unseen forces, and about how that hysteria can often spring from the most mundane moments in life, like taking a walk Uptown.
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PATRICK MCGRAW: Is it just going to be us?
BETSEY BROWN: It’s just going to be us. I’m actually quite happy that it turned out just to be us, because ACTORS is essentially about me coming out of Peter’s shadow. Even that moment of thinking “Oh, maybe Peter should join,” is just the thing I’m trying not to do anymore.
MCGRAW: I thought it was apt that you would ask if Peter could join.
BROWN: I was just doing a self-tape with him, so we were just really cosmically together and I’m the kind of filmmaker who wants to notice the moment and go with what’s happening, so I thought maybe it was meant to be but actually the pushback was good and right.
MCGRAW: Was it hard to sever your and Peter’s cosmic togetherness to do this interview?
BROWN: Not in the slightest.
MCGRAW: What were you doing before the self-tape?
BROWN: I got my hair blown-out. I go to the same salon on Pike Street every time. It’s amazing because they also give you a head massage. I’ve been really obsessed with massages recently. I just discovered that I like them.
MCGRAW: Did you not like massages before you recently found that you liked them?
BROWN: I’m trying to be better about bodies touching in general. I’m actually not a very cuddly person. My therapist suggested that I get massages.
MCGRAW: It seems like you as a character, or the characters you play, love to be touched to an almost obsessive extent.
BROWN: Well, for instance, in that one scene in ACTORS where the Betsey character says, “We’ve never touched cheeks like that before.” For me that was really intense because I rarely hug Peter. I’m not that affectionate. Though I actually wish I wasn’t even talking about this because I want to rewrite the story and say that I am really cuddly because I think that the enlightened and most embodied version of me is actually super comfy and cuddly and okay with physical touch. But a lot of the characters I’ve played have been alone and very in their bodies, for instance in The Scary of Sixty-First. In ACTORS Betsey’s character is obsessed with getting fucked, but that’s more of a utility than a physical connection.
MCGRAW: There’s this similarity between Betsey from ACTORS and Betsey from Shegetsey Betsey where you’re this “bedridden Betsey” and very physical to the point where you start doing baby talk. I would say someone who likes being touched would also enjoy baby talk. Almost like you have to be touched in order to conduce that baby talk.
BROWN: I actually want to enter into a phase where baby talk isn’t a part of my life and relationships anymore. I see that as part of my fractured self where my voice goes back to this warm primal baby talk but that almost always leads to a disconnect. That’s something that I’m always exploring in my films, how in the most intimate relationships, you regress.
MCGRAW: It’s inevitable to regress, and then of course the relationship ends and it’s almost humiliating to realize how much you’ve regressed in front of this other person. That’s one of the things that hurts the most when you’re out of a relationship, but it’s inevitable. Regression and deterioration is part of life. It’s beautiful in a way.
BROWN: You also wind up regressing to somewhat of a baby form when you’re old and your kids have to take care of you; the roles switch. Thinking about regression in that sense is much more of a hopeful twist.
MCGRAW: Do you try to chart your life as if you’re a character in a movie? Even in this interview, you tried to catch yourself and change that narrative of what you were saying. It’s like how a lot of my characters are written in this kind of autistic voice that’s almost the worst version of myself. I’m always trying to re-correct myself in real-life and my characters try to do it as well. But there’s only ever just one character.
BROWN: I definitely make my movies in order to work through my own life. For instance, the Betsey in ACTORS is the worst version of me. It’s the nightmare version. But that was also the goal I set out.
MCGRAW: You have to become your own worst nightmare in order to avoid it.
BROWN: In that sense, I felt that ACTORS was a bit of an exorcism. I find great freedom in being able to work through things and through characters that are much like myself and yet also not at all me.
MCGRAW: I feel the same way. I have a piece in Heavy Traffic 1, and many people have told me, “The character in your story sounds like a retarded version of yourself.” But to me, that’s exactly who I am. I’m exactly like that character. I think exactly like him. But it’s also just a version of me, the one that comes out when I’m writing well. But he really is an absolute moron. So that’s how I see myself. I write through an idiot version of me.
BROWN: I definitely see versions of me in ACTORS and I do believe that I was working through real things, but I actually feel really far away from her in this way because I knew that that was the goal. That version of Betsey is a loser and I’m not a loser. She’s really weak and in things for the wrong reasons. And I actually believe I’m in it for the right reasons and she’s a lot more lost.
MCGRAW: Well maybe that’s why people like ACTORS, because it is actually quite uncomfortable to write like that. When I write myself in a completely horrible way it is, I don’t want to say scary because that sounds a bit gay, but it is uncomfortable. And many people just try to blanket over that writing with meaningless plots and gimmicks. The only thing that matters is style and good style often comes from being uncomfortable, or at the very least making your characters uncomfortable.
BROWN: That’s a huge thesis statement is, go into the scary shit because that is what’s worth. That’s what is closest to your heart.
MCGRAW: I saw ACTORS as being a movie that was about you having a mental breakdown, or as an expression of your anxiety that was being played out through various characters. It almost wasn’t based on plot at all. Do you think that to write a good character you need to have multiple personality disorder while you’re writing?
BROWN: I don’t relate to that. Personally I need to be really really grounded for me to make my best work. But it is a sort of horseshoe: being the most grounded is also the closest to being completely off the rails. I definitely go into real states when I’m performing. But it’s actually very different with the filmmaking aspect that I felt on ACTORS. With www.RachelOrmont.com, I was really in a state. I feel as though I left my body and something else entered, which made it feel like a successful situation. So in that sense I understand what you mean. But with ACTORS, since I was wearing both hats, I had to maintain a sense of clarity.
MCGRAW: Many of your characters devolve into hysteria. Have you had these mental breaks in real-life?
BROWN: I definitely think that what gets me most able to be hysterical is the regressed baby part of me. But actually I’ve never had a manic episode, and I feel very grounded. I’m actively really grappling with this right now. I want to graduate out of this hysterical, crying baby from the most intimate of relationships because I think it’s… I’m so embarrassed to even be saying this, but you know what? Here we are. I think the reason why I’m compelled to say it is because I feel closer than ever to it actually being a fictionalized version of myself.
MCGRAW: It’s interesting that you tie baby talk to hysteria. Because to me, hysteria is a scene when you’re alone and pacing and the hysteria is welling up within you, and baby talk is the opposite of that: you’re so comfortable and you’re so within yourself that you just start talking like a baby almost against your will. As opposed to when you’re on the verge of raving in the streets.
BROWN: The baby talk is amazing when it is actually just a beautiful, innocent baby. But I think my baby gets cranky too easily. I’m also grappling with it at the moment because my character in www.RachelOrmont.com spoke almost exclusively in baby talk. I will say a lot of couples are really triggered by the baby talk. In Toronto, I had this couple come up to me and they were like, “We hate you for this.”
MCGRAW: It’s definitely very jarring to see something on screen that you usually only see in the depths of someone’s bedroom. It shows how important things like baby talk are in terms of getting closer to people. I also think the movie looks hysterical. The breakdown aspect of it plays into the literal aesthetic of the movie.
BROWN: It’s definitely chaotic, cluttered. That’s the voice I always try to have with my films. I want the aesthetic to have my same physicality. I want the visuals to look like a breakdown. I wanted the movie to look like a breakdown.
MCGRAW: How do you try to create intimacy off screen?
BROWN: I think flirting is a way of doing that and something I’m working on at the moment. I’m really trying to figure out how to flirt.
MCGRAW: How’s it going?
BROWN: Honestly, really well. This is not flirtatious by the way, me saying this.
MCGRAW: I understand.
BROWN: I’m doing poorly literally right now. And I’m very much regretting saying this at all. But it’s just the truth. There are certain things that you can actually do to make it feel like you’re flirting, it’s almost like tricking yourself. But everything is tricking yourself. I’m tricking myself right now.