The Black List Interview: Quinn Shephard on BLAME
Quinn Shephard steps behind the camera with BLAME, her first feature as writer and director. Shephard began working on BLAME at fifteen, and earlier this year, the film premiered in the US Dramatic Competition at the Tribeca Film Festival. We spoke with Shephard about directing your own performance, subverting female archetypes, and how her writing process evolved.
What catalyzed your writing process for BLAME?
I did a production of THE CRUCIBLE when I was fifteen, when I was a sophomore in high school, and I really fell in love with the play and with the role of Abigail Williams — it was such a powerful experience to be playing an adult role at such a young age. I’d been a professional actor for pretty much my whole life, but I’d never had an opportunity to play anyone like Abigail. I didn’t want to let the play go — I was so enchanted by the story, and the character of Abigail made me feel powerful and womanly in a way I hadn’t felt before. So, I decided I wanted to write a script that would take the general skeleton of the play and put it into a high school setting through the eyes of the girl (or girls, in the case of BLAME) instead of through the eyes of the John Proctor character. But it was a really different script back then — I think a lot of people think when I say that I started writing it at fifteen I was some kind of child screenwriting prodigy…but I don’t think they would think that if they could actually read that version of the script [laughs.]
How did the idea of BLAME evolve from fifteen to twenty-two? How did your process change as a writer? At what point did you also decide to star in and direct the film?
It evolved very, very gradually because I had a long way to come in my maturity as a writer. I did have a lot of help too, I cannot take all the credit — my mom was really involved in developing the story with me. She gave me quite a few notes, spent a lot of time working with me, talking about the characters, and really helped me find the core of the story — a story that would be more universal, and you know, not just appeal to myself, and would speak to an adult audience as well. Working on the script in high school was very therapeutic, almost like my version of going to a psychologist — I was able to work out a lot of my teen angst through writing instead of going through all the other crises people tend to have when they’re teenagers.
The way that it evolved is really kind of astounding to me — on the surface, the writing got better, the characters got deeper, there was an improvement. But on a more psychological level, my perception of the topics I was writing about changed completely, because when I started writing the film, I was a lot more romantic about the way in which I viewed the student/teacher relationship. As I got older and was directing the film at twenty years old, and editing the movie with an adult perspective, I saw a completely different story, one that was really sad and reflective of the damage a sort of non-consensual, statutory rape kind of situation can have on a young girl.
My view of consent and the ability to consent had changed drastically from when I was fifteen and believed that I was very smart and very in control of my sexuality…when you’re fifteen, and you’re writing about this kind of relationship, you’re like, “this would be fun if this happened to me because I’m an adult,” and then you get to be an adult and you’re like “thank god I wrote this script instead of having an affair with one of my teachers.” That’s what makes the film resonate so much, that it has a real youth to it — I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that it captures the fifteen year-old perspective because I was fifteen when I came up with the idea, so it feels like the way a child would perceive that relationship, which is what makes it very disturbing at times…and also very beautiful and tender at other times.
I wanted to ask about the idea of writing for yourself, not only knowing that you’re going to be playing Abigail, but you’ll also be directing your own performance as Abigail. How do you jump between the roles of actor, director, and writer, and unify them to execute your vision?
I was prepared for it for it to be difficult, and knew that I’d have to always be multitasking, but there are a lot of things you can’t predict. The amount of prep you have to do as an actor to prepare emotionally for a scene is sometimes not conducive to what you need to do as a director — sometimes you have to put yourself in a state that will leave you raw and emotional, but then you’re walking onto the set as a director in the next second, and you just feel completely out of it. There were so many things I hadn’t considered, like the fact that you’d need to be going through hair and make-up at the same time as your daily production meeting. In that sense, I think I wouldn’t want to direct and act again any time soon, but I’m very happy that I did it because it was an experience that was so personal to me, and I’m really pleased with the way the performance and the film came out. My favorite moments on set were the days I was only behind the camera because I was wearing less hats, and it was less difficult to execute my vision.
With Melissa (Nadia Alexander), BLAME gives us a very complicated teenage girl antagonist, so I wanted to delve into the way the film crafts this kind of virgin/whore dynamic, as well as how it handles the larger group of female friends, and the complexities of their relationships. What was your approach to capturing these sort of tricky teenage girl dynamics, especially as you tried to make sure that this film would resonate with all audiences?
First and foremost, it was important for me to have a sense of humor about the trope-iness of the characters. I think with the whole virgin/whore dynamic, it was important to me that the audience knew that the film was self-aware right off the bat — in the first fifteen minutes, we’re meeting these characters we’ve seen before like the shy, outcast girl, the angry, loud-mouthed cheerleader type. But as the film goes on, they completely depart from those characters, and really become their own people, and the point of that is to show that there are human beings behind tropes. So I wanted to create these girls who fit into stereotypes, and check certain boxes, but also have completely real and valid lives of their own.
So for me, the number one thing was to have a kind of sense of playfulness with it, with the wardrobe especially, to show the audience that we’re in on the joke — that these characters are something that you’ve seen before, but behave in a way that you haven’t seen before. The other thing was casting, so that no one felt pigeon-holed in their role — not just casting according to type.
Marcia DeBonis, an actor in the film who has also worked in casting, knew both of us as actors, she told me when she came to set that she would have called us in for the opposite roles — because on paper, that’s what makes sense, but then when she saw it on set, she couldn’t imagine it any other way. Of course in my mind, I never could’ve played Melissa, and Nadia never could have played Abigail — Nadia was like, “I’ve never played this kind of bitchy, sexpot,” but I was like, “I’ve played a lot of ‘hot college girls,’ and that sort of character.”
Nadia had a sort of kind of violence to her as an actor, and that’s really powerful to watch — I have a lot more emotional vulnerability, and she has this kind of guarded quality, and that was more important to me than the surface take. I think it ultimately made it feel less trope-y because as Melissa develops, and we find out that she wasn’t just born this girl, and that this is a facade she’s putting on. In high school, there are way more girls who force themselves into these roles that they’ve seen on TV or in a magazine or based on what their friends are doing rather than these sort of girls who are sort of like, just born as this kind of “hot girl.” It was really important to me that Melissa felt like someone you knew, that you went to high school with, and came to understand over the course of the film. We were blessed with an incredible cast overall, and casting against type in those two main archetypal roles was key to achieving more of the relatability of the film.
In creating this kind of sexy teacher archetype with Jeremy (Chris Messina), a character that we’ve seen before many times before, how did you approach making him a complex, sort of tragic person? How did Jeremy evolve during your writing , and what did Chris Messina bring into that process as well?
We had Chris in mind for a really long time before he knew we had him in mind, so I was imagining the script in his voice for quite a while. My mom had brought him up to me as a person she thought would be right for the role years before we made the movie. We had seen him in AWAY WE GO, and Chris has this incredible supporting role in the film — he has this really emotional scene with Melanie Lynskey, it’s one of the most beautiful performances I’ve ever seen. He has this blend of masculinity and vulnerability — this kind of tough man who can cry type — and there just aren’t that many actors who have that.
We decided he was just going to have to say yes even though we didn’t know him at all — I sent him the script, and wrote him this love letter, and he ended up signing on. When he came on board, he was really passionate about helping me shape the character — we started doing these like, three-hour phone calls every other week, where we rewrote a lot of scenes, we did improv, he brought his own wardrobe. He really wanted to straddle the line between likable and bad guy with Jeremy, and I think that since his actions are inherently unlikable and disturbing at times, he wanted to make him a real person, a morally grey real person. For the audience, we wanted to make sure that you like Jeremy sometimes, and you want to smack him some other times [laughs.]
What do you hope that teenage girls who see BLAME will take away from it, and how do you hope that impacts their relationship to classic plays like THE CRUCIBLE that is taught in high school?
I think the film conveys a strong message of not judging people by their exteriors, and asks the audience to understand that everyone has their own struggles, and can do bad things sometimes without being evil people. As far as girls, I hope that it makes them look at their peers with a little less judgment, and realize that if they’re being bullied by someone, it might not be about them, it might be about the bully, about what they’re going through and their anger. I was bullied a lot in high school, and writing always helped me understand the other side of it, helped me understand that it wasn’t always just about me.
I hope this film helps girls understand that even if a relationship with an older man at that age seems like it’s rooted in love and good intentions, ultimately it’s not a good idea. With this film and the way that it ends, I think there’s a really poignant moment at the end of the film — regardless of where you stand on the relationship, whether you think it’s romantic or disgusting — there’s a point in which we see a parallel with Abigail and Melissa, and we really have to reckon with the fact that they’re both children on the inside, and this is not a good relationship for either of them. We’re really rooting for Jeremy to make the right decision, too, to not take advantage of Abigail, and I hope that a young audience will see that and respond the same way.
We have all of these romanticized, scandalized relationships in movies where we see twenty-seven year old actresses wearing a short plaid skirt and throwing themselves at their teachers, and I wanted to make a film that was more raw, and had a different perspective on it. In terms of literature — I think it’s great. A lot of girls who’ve told me they loved the movie are sort of like me: “I love THE CRUCIBLE, Abigail is my dream role.” People who love being theatrical, and love literature, that’s just an added bonus for them — I was always super happy to see someone like me on screen.
