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Interview with Marja Lewis Ryan

Very few first-time filmmakers get to see their work in front of more than a few friends or family members, let alone the elite crowds that grace the Sundance and Slamdance Film Festivals, but that’s exactly what Marja Lewis Ryan, writer, co-producer and co-star of The Four-Faced Liar has just experienced.

Just after the mania of Sundance 2010, the newcomer to the silver screen (and self-proclaimed “theater kid”) talked to us about the film and the festival experience from the other side of the aisle. AfterEllen.com: So how was the experience, going to Sundance and Slamdance? Marja Lewis Ryan: It was unbelievable. We were talking about it – I don’t know what we were expecting necessarily, but anything that we thought was going to happen – happened ten times over [laughs]. We had this publicist, Jim Dobson – he did the publicity for Buried with Ryan Reynolds. So basically, everywhere that Ryan was asked to go, we were escorted carefully behind him. We got to do things we’d never be able to do in any other circumstance. It was just really fun!

AE: What kinds of things? MLR: We got taken over to the Sundance tents, where we got our pictures taken by a ton of different media outlets, we got to go to the Variety party on Sunday night.

AE: Sounds awesome, how was it? MLR: It was really, really fun. They gave an award to Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who, ironically enough, had taught a master class with us a couple of years back, so we got to talk to him afterward. He’s incredibly humble and so nice and just excited that a new generation of theater kids out of New York were doing what he and his friends had done ten or twelve years ago. It was really awesome.

AE: So, was this your first Sundance as a filmmaker? MLR: Oh yeah. We’ve never done anything like this before – we’re theater kids, we’d never acted in a film, I had never written a film, I’d never been to a film fest before. Well, I went to Outfest last year, to watch movies, but I’ve never been invited as anything other than a spectator.

AE: How is it on the other side? MLR: How is it… it’s flattering and overwhelming and really humbling, I think. We had sort of been living in this bubble with about nine people, between the producer and the director and the cinematographer – and you kind of forget that other people do this all the time, and we [had] a shared experience with [the other filmmakers]. It was just really humbling. It was the best week of my life. I don’t know what else could come even close.

AE: Did you have any weird Q and A sessions? Did anybody ask you anything bizarre? MLR: In a public setting, nobody asked anything beyond “What was it like” and that sort of thing. But in a private setting, you know, we have to market a film here – and people would come up to us all the time and ask us “Are you gay?”‘ and “Is Emily a good kisser?” and “Are you really girlfriends?” and we were just like, laughing all the time and saying “I don’t even know if we’re supposed to answer any of these questions!” Stuff like that, I feel, was the silly part. Emily and I are actually best friends, so the question of “Is Emily a good kisser” actually came up more than once, and that always makes me laugh.

AE: That’s got to be a very funny experience. MLR: It definitely is! Especially because the running joke is that Emily is the longest relationship I’ve ever had. We did the play three years ago; so basically, we’ve been playing girlfriends for three and a half years now! But no, we truly are best friends, so it’s awkward to answer any other question beyond that! [laughs]. AE: What was it like sitting in the audience at your big premiere? MLR: It totally went well, the other thing was – none of us went to the second one, we only went to the Q and A afterward! That was definitely a smarter choice – I will definitely do that for the rest of my life! I shook the entire screening – I was like “Why am I torturing myself?” It was really nerve-wracking, it was like, “I know every joke that’s coming, oh my God, please laugh!” and you know when a serious moment is coming, and you’re like “Please be quiet and listen, oh God!” The anxiety of that screening was a lot for us. Everyone was really nice to us, please don’t get me wrong, such kind people came up to us, and we got great feedback.

Like I said, our next screening was sold out. It was amazing, but I wasn’t there. [laughs] I purposely was not there!

AE: So, about the film, I understand you originally wrote it as a play and adapted it later on. Where did the inspiration for it come from? MLR: The root of the story goes back to – the four of us went to college together, and David Mamet founded the acting program that we were all a part of. The last year in the studio, he taught us a master class. In the Q and A afterwards, a girl in the front row asked him “Why don’t you write more roles for women?” and he said “Why don’t you?” it was a kind of dismissive, but really honest answer. He was like “I write what I know, and I know how men see the world.” I listened to that, and I was like “You know, we’ve been complaining for the last three years about how there are no scenes for us to do in scene study classes.”

So, I wrote a four-scene, one-act play about the two women. I produced it myself in New York for a night, and got a ton of feedback, including from someone at the writing program at NYU, who said “You should turn this into a short film.” So, he showed me how to format a screenplay, I sent that to a screenplay competition called the Fusion Film Festival in New York, and it got accepted. So I was like “Oh, maybe this isn’t the worst thing in the world!” [laughs]

The whole journey was rooted in that one thing. I wanted to create work for women that I felt was completely fleshed out, and something we can all stand behind as actors. So then we moved out here, and the two guys, Dan and Todd, are our really good friends, I got to work them into the script. I think the guys do “pop”, but that’s more a tribute to them as actors. So yeah, that’s what it was rooted in – making these two female characters as strong as possible, and everything kind of fell around that.

AE: So how was the actual shoot? Was it tough, fun, crazy? MLR: We had so much fun! I mean, you can kind of well imagine – you saw us, we’re kind of goofballs anyway! [laughs] But, we are all really good friends, and Jacob and Danny – the director and the DP [director of photography], absolutely clicked with us immediately, and we’re all really different people, but it was a blast. The first time we went to New York, it was perfect weather, it was October, and it was all sunshine and rainbows. We went back to shoot our winter exteriors in March, and it was a total blizzard and 17 degrees the entire time – it was really brutal. It was still fun, just, you know, a different kind of fun!

I mean there was hard stuff – Todd always remembers, because we were producers on the project, we were the ones getting those late night phone calls, then we would get, like, screamed at when we’d walk onto the set with bags under our eyes, and red eyes, when we looked like hell and still had to be in front of the camera all day. That’s the part that was the hardest, but I don’t know, it’s hard to remember all those times when it’s so good right now!

AE: That’s great to hear — I’ve always heard people say “make movies with your friends” – or at least people you like. MLR: [laughs], yeah, people warned us from the beginning, saying “You guys should be careful, you don’t want to ruin friendships.” I can confidently tell you – I’m not lying when I say it was the best experience we could’ve had. It’s because of that – that level of comfort. It’s different when your best friend comes up to you and says “You’re not doing really well, can you try something else?” You feel differently, because you always feel supported. I would recommend it to a friend! [laughs]

AE: Could you tell me a bit about how you got into acting and writing? MLR: Wow, this is so embarrassing, but I try to humiliate myself three times a day, so here we go. I think I was six or seven, and I was reading Tiger Beat, and I told my mother that the cast of Saved By the Bell had started out as child models, and so, I told my mom that I wanted to be a model! [laughs]

She was like “Why are you saying this?” and I said “I want to be an actor!” She was like “Ok…” no one in my family is an actor, I don’t know why I felt that way, but she escorted me to auditions from the age of nine to the age of 16 – she was incredibly happy when I got my driver’s license. I did a lot of Community Theater growing up, which gave me the chance to do regional theater – I did tours and such before I got to college.

I always kept a journal, but I never, ever thought that I would write anything. It wasn’t a journal in the “dear diary” sense, it was more – people say things that make me laugh, and I’ll always write them down. I never really thought anything would come of that – it wasn’t until college that I started to write, and that was truly out of necessity, it wasn’t that I wanted to, it was because I felt like I had to [laughs].

I still sort of feel that way – I hope I can write for the rest of my life, but it’s definitely not the thing that pumps through my body. I would much rather act.

But, my mother is an artist and author of children’s books, so I think there’s something there. But yes, I just read Tiger Beat, how about that! [laughs] AE: Tiger Beat was your inspiration! MLR: [laughs] Tiger Beat and Zach Morris – that’s all I cared about at that moment in my life!

But I’ll go home and see the places my mom would drive me to – my parents have been incredible foundations for me. They came up to Utah – they were there [for Sundance]. They saw it all happen.

AE: Hey, did they get into the Variety party too? MLR: [laughs] No, but my mom did get to go to a GLAAD party with me – she thought that was pretty awesome.

AE: So what’s next after The Four-Faced Liar? MLR: The four of us own our production company, so we have two features, and we’re just trying to figure out which one to do first, one is gay-themed and one isn’t, so we’re trying to figure out where our film ends up being distributed, who our audience is. We’re going to start one of them at the end of summer.

AE: Can you talk about them at all? MLR: I can talk about them in that, the roots of why I started writing will continue through. Both of them have really strong female leads, and I would like to continue to create positive gay roles, even if it’s not like a gay-themed film. I still think that it’s important to have minorities represented across the board, so we’ll continue to make films that are representative of that goal.

AE: That’s something we can really get behind. Do you have any parting thoughts? MLR: The only thing I would like to add is that I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of press, and I feel like I’ve been pulled out from my core group of people that made this happen – I can sincerely say that it would not have happened without each and every one of those people. The reason that I was good is that they’re so good! To see your best friends’ names scroll by on the opening of a film has been probably been my greatest accomplishment.

Click here to read our review of The Four-Faced Liar, and for more information on the film, check out the official website.

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