Jordan Blady, Writer-Director
Interview by Jesy Odio
Photographs by Emma Louise Swanson
Jordan Blady can never stay in one place for too long. When he’s not in Paris, he’s in Berlin, or Kiev, or even Tbilisi. The writer-director is originally from New Jersey, and a lot of his stuff is in his studio in Los Angeles. But because of the shelter-at-home order, Jordan was finally forced to stop moving. So we sat in Elysian Park, and caught up about his directorial debut, Softness of Bodies (2018), as well as what he would do differently next time.
Softness of Bodies, 2018. Film still courtesy Jordan Blady
When it comes to casting, how do you know what you’re looking for? Yeah, don’t you just know? Like when you meet someone that becomes your best friend and you immediately grow comfortable with them? Or someone that you want to date? It’s that intangible feeling. And you need to have that feeling with someone that’s going to carry your story.
Did you have Dasha Nekrasova in mind when you were writing Softness of Bodies?Yeah, yeah, the character is completely inspired by her. The inspiration for that story is based on our conversations, what we joked about, how we act on dates and our darkest fantasies. She wrote most of the poems before the film. I would even call it an adaptation because I took the poems and based the scenes around those poems. And the final poem she wrote while we were shooting, so it was being written while the movie was in production and reflecting on the experiences that we were having in real time. It really contributed to the authenticity of that experience.
I remember you were still writing the screenplay while you were already in pre-production in Berlin. I’ve always had a serious problem with procrastination. Sometimes you just have to set deadlines so I decided we were shooting that summer whether we had it or not.
Photo by Emma Louise Swanson
And so often writers get stuck between revisions and you managed to skip over that hurdle that sets so many people back. Would you say that is your writing process going forward? No, it’s so dumb. It was so cool that we got to make it so quickly but it’s the dumbest thing ever. Checks and balances exist for a reason. At the same time, projects get stuck in development hell, especially these low and mid indie budget movies. I don’t regret it at all. I do regret not having more money.
But don’t you think you’ll always feel that way? Of course. There was no other way of shooting it but we were so exhausted. I didn’t know how tired we were going to get but, man, a couple more days off would have made a 20% better product.
People always say that they had no idea how tired they would be after their first feature. Obviously I have one of the most coveted jobs in the world and it’s an insane privilege to direct a film. But after four night shoots in a row, I absolutely fucking lost my mind. I had a bicycle in Berlin and I was riding home during morning light on the third day and I was so confused. I would get into bed and I would take a bunch of Xanax and I was re-watching all of Curb Your Enthusiasm every time I came back as a blanket. And I was sleeping in a closet! Because I was in a weird studio where the bed was in the living room. There were two apartments near where the bed was and one couple was always having sex and this other family was always watching tv. So I moved my bed into a closet so I could sleep. And in a couple hours, I would shudder awake to a new catastrophic problem.
“From Beyond”, 2018. Film still courtesy Jordan Blady.
They say that making a movie is telling a story three different times, in the screenwriting, in the filming, and finally in the edit. Yes, editing is horrible. It’s so fucking painful. It sucks, man. If you tell a story three different times in filmmaking, I feel like I want to kill myself three different times. I don’t even know which one is worse. When you’re editing, there’s so many times that you feel like this thing fucking sucks, I’m done, I’ll never get work again.
Does it hurt more than writing? At the end of the day, yes, to me, it’s a little more painful than writing. At least in writing, you’re still imagining and you can still fix it later.
So editing is the final death? Yes, it’s brutal. But I’ve been doing it for so long that it’s the only way I know how to make something. I think it’s because when I get back the dailies, I feel like it’s such a piece of shit that I’m the only one that can turn it around. And then it ends up becoming more me.
“Grisha’s Guide to Kiev”, 2018. Film still courtesy Jordan Blady.
You always have one foot in L.A. and another in a different part of the world. What’s your relationship with all the cities? You know when you have these memories as a kid when you travel and you didn’t see it as an adult? You grow up and you have these memories of the place and it has this feeling. And then when you go back as an adult, and you see where all the streets go and how the town functions, and it loses its magic ?
Are you thinking of a specific place? At this particular moment, I was thinking of Santa Monica. I drove from New York in 2006 with my first co-writer and he really wanted to live in Venice cause he wanted to surf. And the first few weeks there were magic cause I didn’t know how LA worked. And I’ll never get that back. I fucking hate Santa Monica now.
So you’re constantly trying to capture that magic? I made this short film with director of photography Christian Huck. It was the first short film I had made in years and it was the first thing I liked for a long time. And it’s about that traveling experience but it’s also about being in Berlin. I love making films on my first impressions. I’m still doing that.
Photo by Emma Louise Swanson
It seems like you don’t like to follow the film festival circuits. Do you prefer to release most of your work online? I don’t know if it’s because of my immigrant Dad and it’s really nice to be proud of oneself but I feel like, you made the film, you screened it, back to work. How many fucking days of celebration is it going to be? I don’t know if anxious is the right word but I hate all the waiting. I just want to release all this shit.
Where’s your Dad from? That side of the family were Holocaust survivors. They were in the ghetto. My dad was born in Germany after the war.
Is that what brought you to Berlin in the first place? I went to Berlin cause I had my heart broken. I was gonna go to Paris and I had my heart ripped out of my chest. It was my fault, mostly. And I was so sick of being in L.A.
Did going to Berlin make a bond with you and your Dad? I wouldn’t say going to Berlin created much of a bond but during that time, because I wanted to have a European passport, I started the research to get my Polish passport. That forced me to do a bunch of research about our family. I needed a lot of help from him and we had to drive down to Trenton, New Jersey. And that process brought us closer.
Do you remember your earliest memory of finding yourself a filmmaker? It’s very Dad-centric. I would see my Dad during the weekends and one of our favorite activities was going to the movies. And we would also go to the video store and I could rent whatever I wanted. They were usually horror movies. When I was sixteen, I would get stoned and write scenes in Final Draft, and I started thinking about movies and wanting to go to film school.
Do you still smoke weed?I quit when I came out to L.A. I was a chaotic kid, and as soon as I got out here, it still wasn’t legal, but it was already practically legal. So much of drugs was about the illicit factor.
