After becoming one of the darlings of last year’s festival circuit – it scooped two awards at Venice – Shannon Murphy’s Babyteeth arrives like a breath of fresh air on cinemas screens this Friday.
A film she agrees is almost impossible to categorise – let’s just say it involves a seriously ill teenage girl who falls in love with a drug dealer, her parents worst nightmare – it features Ben Mendelsohn and Essie Davis, both familiar faces in Australian cinema, and younger breakout stars Eliza Scanlen and Toby Wallace. Based on the play of the same name, it’s an engaging mixture of humour and tragedy that’s hilarious one moment, and heart breaking the next.
With a career that started in the theatre and then moved to TV, Murphy also directed two episodes of the most recent series of Killing Eve and spoke to us the day after learning that one of them had received two Emmy nominations. She talks about directing for both the small and big screen, as well as how she’d describe Babyteeth. It’s not what you might expect ……
Congratulations on the film. On the face of it, it looks like a coming of age story but it’s an awful lot more than that. Was that why the script jumped out at you when you first read it?
Definitely. And I think that’s why it’s been one of the most hilarious films to try and pitch because it can sound like a million other things you’ve seen before, but it’s just not. It’s so much more experiential than that. Even reading it for the first time, the tones are so unique, you fall so in love with the characters and, for me, I cried so hard when I read it for the first time. I felt devastated that I wasn’t going to be with these four people that I’d completely fallen in love with any more. I knew the only way I could do that was if I made the film so I was very grateful that Jan Chapman and Alex White [executive producer and producer] picked me to do it.
You’ve directed in the theatre and Babyteeth is based on the play of the same name. Did that influence your decision to direct the film?
I hadn’t actually seen the play, which is strange because I began my theatre directing career in the Belvoir Street Theatre in Sydney [where the play was first performed]. But I think that’s why I inherently loved it, because it’s such a cinematic piece yet there were elements which I found really theatrical, which I relished. I wasn’t afraid of them because I knew they would translate really well to the screen – such as the party scene when everyone’s there, or the dinner table scene. They’re quite theatrical but I love the idea that we can push so far into those characters, yet keep them so grounded.
How much did it help that the original writer of the play was also doing the screenplay?
The play is quite different structurally – it begins with the second last scene in the film – but the titles were in the play and they weren’t in the screenplay. When I finally went back and read the play, I said we had to put the titles in there because I just loved the way they made time shift, and also they also make it feel more like a memory in many ways. They can do different things as well – they can start off like a more practical, Brechtian technique but as they go on, they can become like [Arthur] Miller’s inner thoughts. I liked the way they didn’t have to have the same set of rules all the way through the film, that the rules could shift as her journey was shifting.
You made the transition from the theatre to the screen, in terms of TV. How difficult was it to do that? In the theatre, every performance is different, while on the screen, once it’s done, it’s done.
I’d been a theatre director for eight or nine year and I went back to film school when I decided to transition because the two are very different mediums. Yes, you work with actors, so that’s similar, but the technical side of it and the craft are really quite different so I’m really glad I did go back. But I approach cinema quite differently as a result because I make sure that I have a really wide range of performances and I think that’s from my theatre background, because I know how much actors can offer, I know what a great range they can give. So that when you get to the final edit, yes, you have to lock in and make a decision on what you’re going to go with, but it means I’ve got a lot of material to play with. I make people repeat things over and over again.
Why did you make the move to the big screen? Is it different to working in TV or is it more similar than you might have thought?
I thought it was really similar as I’d just finished a four part TV series called On The Ropes and essentially that felt like making two feature films in a row. I was already running on that treadmill and had just a week off in between that job and then going straight to Babyteeth, so I was in the flow of it. I took across from that TV show my editor, my hair and make-up artist and my costume designer so we’d all been working together very closely and that was really helpful. Also, these days – and I could be wrong, because this is only my first film – but to me it doesn’t feel that different. The budgets are not that similar, but the talent is definitely as high and the crew and the heads of department often work across both, so for me the only thing that was harder was that you do feel a lot more pressure in that you’re not part of a bigger company that is responsible for the film so you know you are more closely blamed if it’s a flop.
What’s more exciting is the post production experience, because you have so much more time and Jan Chapman having done The Piano and so many great Australian films, she has so much respect for the time it takes to do things properly and she doesn’t make any rash decisions – she really mulls over things in a very respectful way. And she’s so trusting of her creatives, and that was really a wonderful way to work in post production. For the first time in my life, I really liked post production, because I normally get really frustrated sitting in the dark for so many months, but this time I really loved it.
We were saying earlier how Babyteeth is really difficult to categorise. Yes, it’s a coming of age story, but it’s also an illness story, a romance, a family drama. If you were going to sum it up, how would you describe it?
My favourite quote is – and I’ve totally stolen it from Rita [Kalnejais, playwright and screenwriter] – it’s a film about how good it is not to be dead yet. I love that because it’s funny (laughs) but I think there’s no other way to describe it. Paolo Bertolin who picked us for Venice, did an interview for the ABC Radio in Australia and I listened to it and he said “I’ve just seen this great new film, and I’m really excited by this new talent, but on paper the film sounds terrible. Yet, when you watch it, it’s really surprising and great.” And I called all our heads of department and said, “Do you think he means us? I think that must be us, because Babyteeth is terrible on paper”, and Rita was the first person to say “Oh, yes, 100%!” And she was right. And we continually joke about Babyteeth being rubbish on paper. It was really tricky to get it funded for that reason. You have to see it because when you try to tell somebody about it, it doesn’t have the same effect.
And you’ve got a fantastic cast – Eliza Scanlen in the lead, Toby Wallace, Essie Davis, but the one who really intrigued me was Ben Mendelsohn as the father. We’re so used to seeing him play villains and here we’re seeing a completely different side to him. Why did you decide to cast him? Was he your first choice for the part?
He really was, and it was because in Australia he began his career in comedy and we know his work as a comedian incredibly well. He did many films in Australia when he was younger where he’s got a great sense of humour and in real life he’s one of the funniest people you’ll ever meet. But also he’s very physical and he’s also a father, a very sensitive soul and I knew he had that side to him. I saw a video of him dancing to a song and he had these big puppet hands and it was so tortured and moving and harrowing and I remember I was crying and thinking that was Henry [his character] and his inner world of pain that he can’t express. After seeing that I couldn’t think of anybody else in the role. His Australian agent really championed the role and felt it was something that could really draw him back because he’s been in America since Animal Kingdom. He read the script and had such a strong response to it that he immediately said he loved it and was on board. I’m so grateful he did.
You’ve also directed two episodes of the latest series of Killing Eve. What was it like coming into a series where you were the newbie and everybody else was established?
What’s great about working on Killing Eve is that they want directors to bring their own artistry and to constantly elevate it and excel the show. It’s a bold show, so they’re always taking risks and I think that says a lot about why it’s been so successful and constantly at the forefront of exciting television. Lee Morris and Sally Gentle [executive producers] are such funny, open people to work for and they went “Here’s an episode that focuses on Villanelle – do what you want with it, basically! It’s going to sit outside of the rest of the series, so we want it to feel really different. It’s like a mini feature, so you can be as weird as you want.” They gave me so much creative freedom and it’s one of the most inspiring ways to work. And in television you don’t always get that much freedom. I’ve been really lucky in that I’ve often felt that I have and with them I felt a lot of trust and excitement around doing it. We shot in Romania, which was really fun as well.
Do you think you’ll be part of the directing line up for season four?
With everything that’s going on in the world at the moment, I’m still supposed to be doing The Power which is for Sister Pictures in the UK. I should have been doing that now, but it’s been bumped a bit. The truth is I don’t really know, but I should be going on to do The Power next. Who knows how things are going to work out in terms of timings.
Babyteeth is released in cinemas on Friday, 14 August.
