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Filmmaker Chanya Button on the lesbian character in “Burn Burn Burn”

“This is Thelma & Louise plus Casper the Friendly Ghost,” describes a dead man, and he’s pretty spot on. Burn Burn Burn is a comedy that sees two best friends, Alex (Chloe Pirrie) and Seph (Laura Carmichael), hit the road on a journey to scatter the ashes of their other best friend, Dan (Jack Farthing). Dan guides them along the trip through video messages, making it clear this journey is just as much about their need to deal with their own issues. Both aren’t happy at their jobs, and both aren’t getting what they need out of their relationships—Seph with her boyfriend, James, and Alex with her girlfriend, Pandora.

We recently spoke with the movie’s director, Chanya Button. She told us about how close to home the film is for her, the importance of Seph and Alex’s friendship, the inner workings of Alex as a character and more.

Warning: Spoilers ahead

AfterEllen.com: Charlie Covell wrote the script for Burn Burn Burn. What attracted you to the film as a director?

Chanya Button: It was a project that Charlie and I conceived of together. It came from our friendship, really. We were seeing a lot of really fantastic work coming out of Canada and the States that was really female-centric and really was very articulate about our generation. And it was of a certain size and scale as well, and a lot of emerging talent was able to make really excellent work.

There was nothing incredible coming out of the UK that was kind of in dialogue with that sort of work. So Burn Burn Burn is a bit of a message in a bottle to that kind of call of fantastic filmmakers.

AE: With this film playing at LGBT film festivals, some people are going to wonder just by looking at the promotional material if Alex and Seph get together. Having watched the film, I know why that wouldn’t be a good move without making a lot of changes. But were you at all tempted to have them be more than friends?

CB: No. Not at all. I feel very lucky actually to have a hugely diverse group of friends in terms of backgrounds, gender, sexuality, race. I think it was sort of important to us that you can have a close friendship like that between two women where one’s heterosexual and one’s not and it never has to come to anything. That’s not a given. It was never part of the story and also kind of as a byproduct we just felt like—I think it’s a bit of a stereotype that we need to shake off.

AE: You’re playing at Inside Out in Toronto, which is great. But were you concerned about having some difficulties getting the movie into LGBT film festivals because it’s not “super gay”?

CB: We weren’t really thinking about festivals when we made the film. We were just trying to make a story that felt representative of us and our interests and our friendship. The film is very reflective of our own lives and it felt true to us in that way. So if there are LGBT film festivals who get something from the work and enjoy that there’s one gay character and one straight character and they don’t get together, then fantastic. The other lead character, Dan, played by Jack Farthing, also isn’t heterosexual.

AE: Now although Seph gets some action while they’re on the road, Alex doesn’t. Especially because she just got out of a relationship that wasn’t good for her, why didn’t you throw her a bone in terms of some lady loving?

CB: Because she’s a very traumatized person. And her trauma isn’t to do with her sexuality. I think that was something that was very important to me as well. She’s got a lot of stuff that she’s not been dealing with. That has to do with her relationship with her mother. That has to do with the fact that her sister passed away when she was young. It’s developed into this horrible guilt complex she has about everything and everyone around her. She feels responsible for everyone. If anything bad happens, she thinks it’s because of her. She’s a private person. She’s not the sort of person who would have causal sex. Ever. She’s just not that sort of person.

AE: What is it about Alex as a person that allows her to open up her heart and life to a shitty person like Pandora?

CB: What makes any of us open our hearts to rubbish people? We all fall for the terrible people all the time. That’s a real universal that, God, certainly I relate to. You find yourself opening up to the wrong people. I think that’s something that people learn, unfortunately, throughout their whole life, especially when you’re in your sort of chaotic—don’t know what you’re doing with yourself—twenties. You end up in an intoxicating situation with somebody who isn’t right for you. I think she’s the sort of person who takes responsibility for loads of the crap stuff that happens. So if ever her girlfriend was being rubbish, if ever Pandora was being rubbish, she’d just probably presume it was something that she’d done and something that she could fix.

AE: Is it fair to say Alex runs away from her problems? If it is, why is that, especially considering she otherwise has a pretty controlled nature.

CB: Because her best friend just died. When something like that happens, if something really colossal happens in your life, you react to things in ways that you never—the tectonic plate shifts underneath you, and you react in ways you never thought you would.

To be losing their best friend pushes them both over the edge. They react differently, and they make huge changes, and he sticks around and helps them via his video messages.

AE: But it seems to be something specific to Alex in that she’s also not really facing the issues with her mother. So it kind of seems like it’s something intrinsic about Alex to shy away from problems rather than face them head on.

CB: She doesn’t really shy away, she just internalizes a lot. She just internalizes a huge amount. It’s the way she’s managed to cope with things.

There were times when her mom told her explicitly that her sister’s death was her fault. In order to forgive her mother and have any sort of relationship with her, she has to not address all that stuff. So in a way she avoids stuff, but it’s like she avoids the problem in order to stay in the room.

AE: Alex not being open with her mom about her sexuality—is that because her mom is religious, or just because of what happened with her sister and their resulting lack of communication? Or is it a combination of the two?

CB: We didn’t ever want it to imply that it was about her religion or her socioeconomic background. It’s more to do with the fact that after growing up in a way where her mom sort of blamed her for sister’s death and her problems with alcohol herself, she just has become intensely private. I don’t think she didn’t tell her because she wouldn’t approve, she just—it’s all easier and cleaner and better if her mom knows very little about her life.

AE: The film leaves things pretty open-ended in terms of what Alex will do next. Is it your impression that she’s going to choose more wisely in terms of romantic partners and that she might even talk about her relationships with her mom?

CB: Yeah, 100 percent. I think that’s the sort of final gift that Dan gives them is he opens his own heart via those video messages and shows them if he can do that right before he passes away, in the face of a huge amount of pain and a great amount of fear, if he can do that, then they have no excuse not to.

I tried to make a film that’s realistic about people, and we’re all flawed. It’s really hard being a grownup, so I don’t want to imply that life is going to be perfect from the moment the film finishes, but they’re certainly going to try and use better tools to make decisions, even if they still mess things up somewhere along the way.

AE: Finally, I wanted to ask if you had any plans to work on LGBT-themed projects in the future? If not in the immediate future, are you open to exploring this theme again?

CB: Absolutely! I’m drawn to diverse worlds and different characters, just because I think that’s really interesting storytelling because the complex female character particularly and LGBT characters, there’s this huge wealth of interesting people to explore. In the end, a lot of my work I think will have characters who aren’t heterosexual, but not because I’ve got any agenda. I think it’s partly because my own life is filled with all sorts of different people. It doesn’t make sense for me to make a film that also isn’t filled with all sorts of different people.

Burn Burn Burn plays in Toronto at the Inside Out LGBT Film Festival on May 29. The film is being released theatrically in the UK this summer and coming to the U.S. sometime this year. Visit the movie’s Facebook page to keep up with news of future screenings.

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