The Black List Interview: Alia Shawkat + Miguel Arteta on DUCK BUTTER

Alia Shawkat makes her debut as a screenwriter with DUCK BUTTER — she co-wrote the script along with acclaimed director Miguel Arteta over a period of five years. DUCK BUTTER explores the intimacy that develops between two women (Shawkat and Laia Costa) throughout an intense 24-hour dating experiment that includes having sex every hour, on the hour. DUCK BUTTER also shot entirely within a 24-hour period, adding to the realism of the story. Kate talks to Alia and Miguel about their process as co-writers, how rehearsals shaped their film, why sex is so crucial to this story, and more.

I wanted to begin by asking this — since DUCK BUTTER is ostensibly a rom-com, tell me about your meet-cute and how you started collaborating on the screenplay together.

Miguel Arteta: You know, Michael Cera introduced me to Alia when she was, I think, eighteen or nineteen years old. I was working on a film in Michigan and she was in Michigan, too, and then I cast her immediately for CEDAR RAPIDS. Then I realized, “She’s so smart — I better write something with her,” and that’s how it came about.

Alia Shawkat: Yeah. We were at the Toronto Film Festival and you were like, “Let’s write something,” and I was like, “Okay!” And then five years later — DUCK BUTTER [laughs.]

What was your writing process like? Were you guys in the same room together, were you collaborating in different parts of the world in different time space?

AS: Well, yeah. We were both working while writing, so we would be FaceTiming from different places where we were working, and then eventually, like the last three months we really sat down — we were at my house, which is the house in the movie, too, the second house. We sat up in that breakfast area where the Mom scene is, and just wrote the rest of the movie. We had, like, index card notes covering the walls, and finished [the script] there.

It’s interesting to hear that you guys are using notecards — it seems to be a really effective way to write for many folks.

AS: Yeah, totally. Miguel taught me that, and I really liked it.

MA: It’s nice to be able to move it around — I have a nice picture of her in front of the whole wall.

AS: Yep. [laughs]

What was it like filming in your own house? Did you know that this was going to be part of the process from the jump?

AS: Yeah, I think when we were writing it — because you never know how much you’re gonna be able to get to make a movie — I was like, “Well, we’ll use my house!” You know? But it was kind of surreal, especially the stuff in the bedroom, in my room — Hillary [Spera], the DP, and the whole crew, which wasn’t a huge group, but still — with them being in my bedroom with me, filming me falling asleep and waking up. Once we were wrapped and I woke up, it was weirder that they weren’t there, and I was like, “That’s bad,” I shouldn’t be missing a film crew filming me sleep. [laughs]

That’s too much life imitating art. Kind of on that same note, what was it like writing a character you knew you were going to be playing, and how did you guys collaborate knowing that Alia would ultimately be in the movie?

AS: We always talked about it knowing that I’d want to act in it. I think a lot of Naima is like, in a way, us. It’s our perspective of relationships we’d been in. So a lot of our fears, and our perspectives were Naima’s, so we kind of put that into the writing.

MA: We started with the idea of — why does it hurt so much when you’re heartbroken? Even when you’re in a disastrous relationship where your mind tells you, “This is not the right person for me, but why does my heart hurt?” That kind of evolved into, let’s make a love poem for why those disastrous relationships are actually important to figuring out what you really care about. I thought both of our ideas of intimacy collided in a really nice way to create Naima, her character, as the one who experiences this crazy ride. There’s this push and pull between wanting to give herself completely to a relationship and then being scared of it. I think we were willing to share all of our personal details to create her character.

AS: I also really like writing with other people, but in mind of the character that I’m gonna play. It’s really helpful, because while writing, I’m able to speak from the character, you know? Not like, “Okay, now I’m Naima.” [laughs] It helps with the dialogue, so writing the scenes, it’s a lot easier to figure out what my choices are as an actor, and that helps the writing a lot.

How did you guys hit upon the 24-hour timeframe mechanic for the story?

MA: You know, we first wrote a script in which a heterosexual couple spends a year-and-a-half together, and all the things you see in this film happened to them over a year-and-a-half. But something that was happening when they first met, they kind of rejoiced and had this crazy idea, I guess from something — from me being a teenaged, ridiculous person I always dreamed of happening, like what if…A friend of mine read the script and went, “I just can’t help — I’m gonna say it once. I wish the whole movie was that 24-hour experiment.” It kind of touched something. Working together in the writing, we were very free with it, and we allowed the film to tell us what it ought to be. So at that moment…I mean, we had worked so hard on that whole script.

AS: Yeah, we had dialogue, and beats — and then you’re like, “Fuck it! Fuck it all.” [laughs]

I think that’s just a good example of how the best idea always wins. Like, “We did all this work, but this was a better idea and so we took it.”

AS: Totally.

On that note regarding the intense intimacy in the film, did you guys have a rehearsal period? Were you able to work ahead of time? Because there’s such a lived-in, authentic sense of emotional and physical intimacy in the movie.

AS: I’m glad it comes across. We had only a couple weeks with Laia [Costa], and then with Hillary, the DP. The way we were going to shoot it and the amount of time we had, and we were like, “it has to feel really like it’s one night.” [Hillary’s] lens feels like they’re just in the room with us, in order to create that. So as much as we could create a performance, the DP has to feel just much in there. So, [Hillary] was a part of every rehearsal, even if we were just talking actor notes, or whatever.

Then Laia and I would have our own notes, and then [we’d do notes] with Miguel. And we’d do other rehearsals where it was just Hillary, Laia, and I. We spent two weeks hanging out, eating every meal together, and just talking about the whole story, and the beats. And then the week before, we did a walkthrough of the 24-hour sequence that we shot in 24 hours in reality, so we had to kind of block through with the DP, too, to be like, “Okay, so I think I’ll be here, and then maybe we’ll go here, and then we go up to the kitchen, and then we come back.” So, we kind of figured out all the cues, but then once we started the 24-hour shoot, then we just had to go from there and kind of react as much as we could in the moment, and add new stuff to it, as well, you know?

So many folks now talk about having no rehearsal period, and they’re just kind of thrown into it. I got to talk to Mike [White, one of Arteta’s frequent collaborators] about BEATRIZ AT DINNER, and he mentioned how essential a rehearsal period was to that film as well. So, very cool that you guys got to fully walk through everything.

AS: Yeah, especially when you’re in one setting, or not a lot of different settings — it’s all about the little dynamics and changes between [characters.] So yeah, it was very cool.

MA: And there was excitement about shooting in 24 hours. Everybody was like, “I’ve never done a marathon shoot like this.” So, the whole camera department, the sound department — everybody was kind of energized because of that. We got two crews so they could rest, and so many people were like, “No, I want to be there the whole 24 hours!” [laughs]

AS: We were like, “It’s not legal! Get out of here!”

At what point did Laia Costa come into the process? I noticed she was credited as an associate producer, too, so hearing you talk about spending the two weeks together totally makes sense. Was she always the person you had in mind? How did that process all work?

AS: It had been originally for a guy, and we were looking for someone and were having a really hard time, and still working on the script a lot. We had seen VICTORIA, this film that she stars in that’s so brilliant — so we Skyped with her and offered her a smaller part. But when we told her about the 24-hour sequence, she was like, “I’ll do the smaller part, but you have to let me stay for the whole 24 hours, just to see it.”

And, you know, because VICTORIA has a different time — I don’t want to say gimmick, but a different time [element] in the shooting— she was just so excited by that process. So, once we had that Skype with her, I remember Miguel called me and was like, “You know who’s the most Sergio of anyone we’ve met? Laia.” It solved so many problems [with that character] becoming a woman, but it wasn’t like, “We need to make it a woman who’s right for it,” it was like, ““Laia is Sergio. So, that’s why we’re going to change it.” You know? And then it solved all these problems in the script, and we didn’t even have to edit that much, because it just solidified it and made it more honest — everything just started to make more sense. It was always for her, but we didn’t know it yet.

MA: She improvised all of her dialogue. She has a producing credit, too, because she wrote —

AS: She wrote that way.

MA: She wrote all of it. I felt like what was really interesting is that she really was Sergio, we’d been looking for Sergio — she was it. And then there were all these added benefits, like I realized it would have been not good having a man and a woman, because then we’re having to deal with the whole, “What are you saying about heterosexual relationships, man vs. woman,” and all that boring stuff that I’m not interested in. [laughs] And then I was like, “This is just going to focus us on their personalities.” And that was just thrilling, because that’s what we were curious about, you know? Why a person that’s like Naima goes crazy for a person that is like Sergio, and why a person like Sergio also falls so deeply in love with a person like [Naima.] So, I hope the movie is focused on who they are, and not on their sexual orientation.

Miguel, I wanted to ask you this question because I asked it of Mike White too — to me, DUCK BUTTER feels kind of like a contemporary women’s picture, and feels very similar to BEATRIZ AT DINNER and THE GOOD GIRL. All three films are about these really complex female protagonists.What attracts you to these kind of characters?

MA: I grew up as an outsider — my father’s Peruvian and my mother’s Spanish, but I grew up in Puerto Rico, so I was never the Puerto Rican kid. They were like, “You’re a foreigner.” And I was like, “But I was born here!” And then, you know, I moved to Costa Rica and they were like, “There’s that Puerto Rican kid,” and I was like, “No!” And then I came to the United States and they were like, “There’s that guy with the funny accent,” and I was like, “It’s not!” Then I went to live with my grandmother in Spain and they were like, “There’s that Latin kid,” and I was like, “For fuck’s sake! Who am I?” [laughs]

I realized that there’s some sort of identity plight in me that helps me be more observant as a filmmaker. I also think women are put upon by society in a way that is interesting. They’re always asked to be a good sport about everything, and there are certainly some correlations with being an immigrant that have aligned for me. I’ve always been aligned with people that are in some ways experiencing some sort of insidious prejudice. Maybe for that same reason, I fell in love with the great movies and filmmakers of [classic] Hollywood — the Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Barbara Stanwyck movies. I adore them, I’m still watching them. To me, this movie in some ways is paying tribute to those movies — these women know the difference between being a martyr and being a victim.

I wanted to ask you guys specifically about the sex in the movie. It’s still such a taboo, I feel like, to show women having sex with each other in a movie where it’s not just for pure titillation. What was that experience like on set, knowing that there’s gonna be a certain kind of audience reaction that’s unavoidable, but also wanting to show the really tender, moving version of this relationship? How did you guys balance those expectations?

AS: Even just the tagline at first was funny to say, because even though that is the story — “They have sex every hour! Orgasm every hour!” — to me, it was like “Yeah, but not the way you think!” That’s how I always interpreted it, because it’s what it’s about. It’s like how, in a relationship, you’re with someone for, say, a year, and how sex changes in a relationship. So, they’re trying to bypass that by being like, “If we just keep having sex, we’ll get over the lust and get past that and be able to see each other for what [we truly are.]”

When you first meet someone, there’s a long time where lust is just blindly guiding you, and you’re like, “I’m so smitten about this person!” And then you’re in a bad relationship and you look back, and you’re like, “Oh, it was just the sex that kept me there for, like, six months.” [laughs] But, the way that we went about it, too, is — Hillary, and Laia and I — we had rehearsal time. We were like, “Okay, we’ll give time in rehearsal to choreograph it,” but we didn’t actually choreograph it. We were just, like, talking about it. Laia had never slept with a woman before, and I do sleep with women, so that was part of the discussion, too, about being like, “It’s not that different!” Not that she was like, “What happens when two women have sex?” [laughs] Her instincts were obviously human, and natural.

But once we got into the room, in Sergio’s room, which is where most of the sex happens, again, we had written it out where each time they have sex is for a distinct reason. First, it’s lustful, and physical, and then it’s more intimate, and then one person can’t come — it all has a trajectory for the story. So, we knew what each sex scene had to be — it wasn’t just like, “Alright: now sex.” Like anything in a scene as an actor, you’re like, “So, why am I here? What’s my intention?” So, each sex scene had an intention. And then, Miguel let [Laia, Hillary, and I] be in the room together alone — he was looking at the monitor outside. He was just kicking through the door and being like, “It’s beautiful! Looks great!”

So much of the film rides on Laia and I’s chemistry. There was already so much trust there that the minute that we started kissing, it was like — and it sounds weird, like it’s incestuous, but it was almost like we were siblings who were playing. And I’m really proud of the sex scenes, because when you look at them, some are really sexy. When I see other sex, sometimes it’s supposed to really turn you on and be, like, crazy sexy. I think there’s some hot sex scenes in it, but then a lot are more that are intimate and sweet. I like that it shows that whole range, instead of it just being like, “Oh damn, they’re about to fuck. This is gonna be hot.” Lots of various kinds of sex.

It reminded me a little bit of Cronenberg’s CRASH in that so much of the character development we get is from the kind of sex that the characters have in the movie.

AS: Thank you, I love that.

MA: That’s very nice of you.

What do you both hope that audiences take away from DUCK BUTTER?

MA: To me, it’s courage. I think it would be nice for somebody to watch this, I hope, and feel like, “You know what? Why am I being tentative if I feel like my heart is going somewhere? I’m gonna just splatter myself into that.” [laughs] Because even if it turns out badly and it’s difficult, I think it’s better to have tried something and have the courage. You’re gonna find out more about yourself than if you’re tentative. I hope the movie encourages you to do that — and I hope that some people try having sex every hour on the hour. [laughs]

AS: I hope the same, and also that, for better or worse, that it makes people realize how honest they are with themselves. For me, even when I watch it, so much is personal in that way — that’s what I’m still struggling with, but want to work towards — trying to be the most honest version of myself, whatever that is. It changes all the time. But, consistently trying to be honest with people — that’s what real intimacy is. So, hopefully, we’re challenging people to do that, instead of being like, “Yeah, they’re my best friend!” And you’re like, “Are they? Do I tell them everything, really? Am I really myself?”

DUCK BUTTER arrives in New York and Los Angeles today, and will be available on VOD May 1. Thanks to Alia and Miguel!