My review of FAULTS, available today on VOD

I first wrote this review after seeing FAULTS at AFI Fest last November. As this is the day the film becomes available on VOD, I am rerunning it my original review below

You can rent or purchase it on iTunes and Vimeo. Showtimes for selected theatres appear after this review.  Also, you may wish to check out my 4-part interview with writer/director Riley Stearns and actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

Part I - Origins of the story
Part II - Complex characters and roles for women
Part III - Making your first movie
Part IV - Having Confidence as a storyteller.


Summing up Riley Stearns's feature debut, FAULTS, without blowing too many details that are best left discovered for oneself is a tricky prospect. What I can tell you is what it displays an abundance of from its writer/director: confidence.

I read the script about a year ago and it was basically catnip to me. I'd venture that some 75% of the film centers on the dynamic between two characters while confined to one hotel room. It's the type of scenario that leaves a writer nowhere to hide: there's no place for pyrotecnics, no kinetic car chases or action scenes. Every bit of tension has to come from those two characters and the claustrophobia of their location. There's no half-assing the writing here. The characters have to pop, they have to have a clear conflict and when you're limited to a duel of words rather than fisticuffs, the dialogue has to be sharp as a jagged piece of glass.

And then once you get all that right on the page and pull off an engaging read, some poor director has to come along and make it look like more than a filmed stageplay. You can probably think of all of the ways a terrified helmer might add a little extra spice out fear that his audience would become bored. These include: wild and crazy angles, which wouldn't be complete without frantic editing, and on-the-nose scoring to add gravitas to the quiet, subtle dialogue.

Stearns doesn't fall back on any of those crutches. That takes balls, especially on your first film. The fact that FAULTS also has to skillfully mix humor with a lot of intensity and creepiness makes this even more of an achievement. I've seen a lot of films that have attempted to mix tones in this way and it soon becomes apparent that there are a lot of ways to fall on your face. A misplaced joke can destroy tension rather than heighten it. A bad gag at the wrong point has the potential to turn the film goofy right when it can hurt the most. Finding that tone and making sure the actors play within that space is the director's responsibility and Stearns hits the bullseye as surely as if he were Robin Hood.

So if you're tempted to think that a film centered largely on two actors in one room is an "idiot proof" prospect for a director, you need to realize there are probably about fifty ways FAULTS could have gone wrong, even with it starting from an incredibly solid script.

It helps that FAULTS has a very solid cast. Leland Orser plays Ansel, a former cult deprogramming expert whose since fallen on hard times. This is a man at such a low point in his life that he steals not just towels from his hotel room, but the battery that powers his TV remote. Following one of his seminars, he's approached by a couple played by Beth Grant and Chris Ellis. Their daughter Claire has fallen into the clutches of a cult and they believe Ansel is the only one who can save her. Ansel may be at the point in his life where he doesn't give a shit, but he needs money, and deprogramming Claire is an opportunity for him to make enough to clear some pressing debts.

Thus Ansel kidnaps Claire and has her brought to a motel room so that he can spend the next five days psychologically breaking her down and undoing what the cult did to her. Ansel knows how to challenge her beliefs all while weakening Claire's resolve. What we witness is the gradual breaking of Claire, in a very strong performance from Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Winstead also happens to be Stearns's wife, but don't confuse this connection for any sort of nepotism or vanity project. Winstead does very good work in a role that is a lot more challenging than it appears for much of a first viewing. Suffice to say, if Winstead impressed you in diverse roles such as Smashed and Scott Pilgrim you'll probably enjoy seeing her play yet another entirely different sort of character here. (And yes, add me to the chorus that thinks Winstead was robbed of an Oscar nomination for Smashed a few years back.)

As the film is not in wide release, that's probably all I should say about the plot. As seemingly straightforward as the premise is, FAULTS zigs and zags in ways that you won't always see coming. It probably isn't giving anything away to heap praise on how Orser and Winstead gradually evolve their dynamic, allowing for a few shifts in the relationship that aren't even immediately apparent until the script specifically underlines them.

And through all of this, Stearns's steady hand shows. Most of these two-handers are shot with long takes with little camera movement. Occasionally there might be a slow push-in or a well-timed pan, but this doesn't feel like a film where the director went out of his way in leaving the editing room to save him, if need be. Many scenes are given room to breathe, playing out in takes that hold on the performers and invite us to register the subtlety in their performances. The score is modulated similarly, as it's completely absent from many scenes, allowing its limited usage to make much more impact.

If this sort of film appeals to you the way it does to me, I hope you'll check it out.

Writer/director Riley Stearns and actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead on FAULTS: Part IV - Having confidence as a storyteller

Part I - Origins of the story
Part II - Complex characters and roles for women
Part III - Making your first movie

As I wrap up my talk with writer/director Riley Stearns and actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead, we discuss the importance of making shorts, how you have confidence that two people in a room can make for an intense film, and working with supportive producers.

BSR: Jumping back a bit, you definitely would not have had this opportunity at all if you had not been making shorts.

Riley Stearns: No. The only reason that FAULTS got made is because THE CUB got into Sundance and was seen by the right people. Even if it hadn’t gotten in I feel like had it been seen by Keith and Jess, they loved it enough that they would have given me the meeting which would have led to them reading the script. A lot of people don’t realize that you don’t get handed things you have to work for them. I’ve done three shorts... they’re out there, and they show what my personality is. Some people write a feature script and that’s all they have and they want people to let them direct it. And there’s no way that’s gonna happen… they need to see something to know they can trust you.

BSR: And you get the training. If you hadn’t done those shorts I’m sure the first day on set—

RS: It would have been a different movie, for sure.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead: And even just building [relationships.] He’s used the same DP on his shorts and by the time they made FAULTS they had a shorthand and a real understanding. There so many things in doing the shorts that prepared you.

BSR: And just having the confidence of knowing “Okay, I’ve done two takes. That’s enough.” Or “I need more coverage.”

RS: That’s another thing, knowing what you need.

BSR: You have to go through the experience of editing something to know what options you’ll need in the editing room.

RS: And I’m an editor of my own stuff, usually. I edited all my own shorts. In another world I would have edited FAULTS but I’m glad I worked with our editor Sarah Beth [Shapiro.] I like having another opinion in the room and she’s so great to be around and so talented herself that I know I’ll continue to work with Sarah Beth on things...

After a couple of days of working with her, she knew what I liked and what I didn’t like. FAULTS is very deliberate in how we cut back and forth. It’s almost like theatre and once she got that rhythm of things, there are scenes in the movie where they are just Sarah Beth and I had the tiniest little input on. She got it so well and cut it how I would have cut it anyway.

BSR: Speaking of it being like theatre, you read the script and it’s a great script, but it’s also two people talking in a motel room. As a reader, I was thinking, “Gosh, how would I make this interesting on screen?” And I assumed you’d have these crazy angles and this crazy blocking to dress it up, and you go in the opposite direction. There’s a lot of… I don’t want to say “static scenes”—

RS: No, they’re static.

BSR: Very minimalist. We’re you’re not even cutting back and forth from over one shoulder to the other. You have one shot of Claire and Ansel sitting at a table and just kind of a slow push-in on them, for a scene that must last at least a good two or three minutes, which is an eternity on screen. How do you get the confidence to do that and know it’s gonna work?

RS: All of my confidence comes from the performances. When I’m shooting something, I have the intent of what I want to do, to do it more in a long take or minimal coverage, but if your actors don’t do a good job, you’re not able to do that and that’s why editing exists – so you can manipulate the performance. Manipulating performances when performances are good is kind of tragic. A lot of my favorite films are one-take things, and that scene in particular where we’re doing the slow push-in, I thought we could do it as one take, but I wasn’t sure if it would work. We shot that part first and if I needed to punch in, that was gonna be our second effort, going back in and getting that coverage. But they did it and I turned to my producers and said, “I think this is gonna be a one-take thing” and they said, “We love that.” So the other bit of confidence is not only the actors, but the people with money saying “We agree with that.”

It was the same thing with the opening scene of the movie where Ansel is trying to pay for a meal with a used voucher. It’s all one take. I knew I wanted to do it as one take and after we did the first run through... my producer Jess came over and said, “We think this would be a really great one-take thing” and I was like “I agree!” And just to have someone else say that... because that was early on in the shooting, to give you the confidence that that’s okay.

MEW: In my experience, typically the producers are worried about getting more coverage and are on the directors, “Do you have coverage? Do you have enough coverage for that?”

BSR: “If you screwed up, I want to be able to fix it in the editing room.”

MEW: Yeah, so having producers who [want the opposite] is a pretty awesome feeling.

BSR: Does doing longer takes change your performance at all, Mary? Knowing that it’s probably gonna be the full take?

MEW: I love one take things, I love when you can get everything, whether it’s a push-in or scenes where the camera’s moving around, first on one actor and then on another... SMASHED was that way. That was the first time I worked that way for an entire movie. I never really knew when it was my coverage and when it wasn’t and it was such an exciting way to work because you were always giving it you’re best. You’re not deciding which take has more importance [in terms of acting full out] depending on where the camera is.

BSR: You’re just playing the scene.

MEW: And I try to bring that same mentality even when I am doing more traditional coverage but it’s hard because people start saying “Just so you know, this is your close-up,” putting that pressure there.

RS: It’s putting all that weight on just one shot instead of the entire scene.

MEW: Yeah, so I prefer to do the longer takes for sure.

BSR: So to wrap this up, you finish the movie, it gets into South by Southwest. What was that like?

RS: Well, I’m from Austin, so premiering at South by Southwest was pretty amazing. I had family, I had friends, I had a lot of our crew at the premiere. It’s also one of the big three festivals in the United States, so in terms of distribution I knew what that meant. And you just have more eyes on you. I was really excited about the fact we were in a crazy premiere position.

It was the best place for us to premiere. I don’t know if a Sundance would have felt as right for this film, but South by Southwest was definitely the right energy. It’s a little more renegade, ragtag in a cool way, and I felt like that kind of energy was right for our film.

BSR: Speaking to distribution, everybody says it’s so much easier to make a movie these days because of digital and technology, but that also means there’s a hell of a lot more competition. How does that play into getting distribution and getting an audience to watch your film?

RS: I don’t necessarily look at it as competition, but everyone’s competing for fewer slots. Nothing’s really going to theatres anymore. All the indies are VOD same day or VOD-only. A couple years ago we were still in a space where FAULTS could have played 30 cities or something like that, but as it is now, I’m just proud we’re in theatres at all because not a lot of people get to do that anymore. Distributors are being more discerning about what represents their brand. Instead of asking, “What would people like?” it’s more like “This represents us.” I feel like Screen Media is in a really cool position right now. They’re re-branding themselves and are picking up some interesting films. FAULTS was one of the first ones of this new wave they’re doing. Mary’s other film ALEX OF VENICE, which premiered at Tribeca, [Screen] will be premiering that about a month after FAULTS. I feel like we’re in a really cool slot with them. They’re excited about film and overall, I just wanted a distributor who’s excited about the movie and I feel like we got that with Screen Media.

BSR: So what are you working on next?

RS: I haven’t written it yet... but soon I’m going to be starting this thing about voyeurism. It’s a little in the same world as FAULTS, darkly comedic, and weird and all of that good stuff that I like to write about.

BSR: And Mary, what do you have coming out?

MEW: I have a show premiering a couple days after FAULTS comes out, called THE RETURNED, for A&E. And then I just finished a movie that J.J. Abrams produced [starring] John Goodman.

BSR: And that’s also a two-hander, isn’t it?

MEW: Also a two-hander, very contained, even moreso than FAULTS. That was a lot of fun and so now I’m riding a wave of press for FAULTS and the show, looking for the next thing.

RS: And the thing I’m working on right now would be for Mary… if she likes it, and that’s key. She’ll be my first choice, but I don’t want her to feel obligated to do it.

MEW: I think now that he’s found his voice and I think we’re so similar in what we like and our tastes that it’s hard to imagine not wanting to do it.

RS: I’m gonna make you do some really dark, dark stuff. And then you’ll be like “Eh...” I’m gonna describe the character as “really hot.”

MEW: Yeah. Totally. Describe each body part.

BSR: Three page description.

You can see FAULTS tomorrow on VOD, or if you're lucky, at a theatre near you!

Writer/director Riley Stearns and actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead on FAULTS: Part III - Making your first movie

Part I - Origins of the story
Part II - Complex characters and roles for women

In this installment, FAULTS writer/director Riley Stearns and actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead talks about how one gets the chance to direct their first feature, and how it's no easy task to get a movie made even when you have a known and acclaimed star attached.

BSR: So I want to get back to talking about Ansel’s character. I’m curious – are we supposed to think he genuinely was a genius about cults and deprogramming at one point, or was he kind of conning people and that eventually caught up to him? It seems you can read it either way.

Riley Stearns: I know that people can read certain things either way, and that’s nice because people can make their own opinions about things. In my mind, Ansel was really good at his job, was one of the better guys at doing what he did, good enough that he had his own TV show for a while... the biggest fault in Ansel is that he doesn’t take responsibility when things go wrong. Even though he was great, because he couldn’t take the blame for things going wrong, that was the bad part about him.

BSR: And he never really recovered.

RS: Exactly.

BSR: We touched on this earlier, but as you’re writing the script and realizing you’re spending so much time in that one room, is there a point where you’re going stir crazy, like “I don’t know how I can keep them in here another fifty pages?” How do you keep that interesting?

RS: What’s funny is that I was worried about a lot of it being in one room. As I was writing I – I don’t do a really long outline, I do abbreviated versions – and I knew this scene needed to be about “this thing” and that scene needed to be about “that thing.” I didn’t really think about it as a stir-crazy kind of thing. I knew what it needed to accomplish. So I never felt like I needed to get out of the room, or whatever. The information the characters needed to dole out in each scene made those scenes not-boring to me.

There was [one script reviewer] who used the terminology of, I had an “outside instigator,” which is where we need to leave the motel at one point. Now I’ve never read a screenwriting book in my life, except to learn formatting, so this wasn’t a thing I was consciously doing, but maybe leaving [that one room] was one thing that I knew I needed to do at one point. That moment when we leave the motel – either you love it or you hate it, but I think it works in the movie. I think it’s one of those things that gives you a sense of space for a second. But there are people who watch the move and are like, “I hate when they leave because I want to be just in this one story.” For good or for bad, I think it lets you miss that story for a moment.

BSR: And it lets you reset, because he comes back and stuff has happened that he’s not aware of.

RS: That’s the thing. I feel like she uses it against him, so when he leaves, she’s like, “I wasn’t expecting this. What can I do now? Oh, I can manipulate him this way.” It wasn’t me thinking “I need an outside instigator at this point, but unconsciously I felt that we needed to leave [that room] for a second. I never felt bored writing the characters, which was pretty nice because I’ve had other scenes in other scripts that I’ve written, where I’ve been like “I just need this scene right here and I’ll have to figure out what they’re gonna say.”

BSR: I want to jump to talking about actually making the film now. I’m sure some people are gonna see the movie, see that Mary’s involved and go "Okay, this guy had it easy. His wife’s a famous actress, she says 'I want to do it' and boom, it gets made." Tell me how that assumption is wrong.

RS: For one thing – and Mary won’t be offended by this because we’ve talked about it – but Mary’s not as big as people think she is.

MEW: Yeah, if that was easy to do, I’d be working a whole lot more! (laughs)

RS: Exactly! And from the get-go, Mary was the only person I wrote the script for—

BSR: Who was your second choice?

(Riley and Mary both laugh)

RS: That’s funny to think about! The problem is, with a script like this, you need at least one person to be involved so someone else will read it and say, “At least they’re involved.” Or you need a first feature so they can say, “Okay, at least I saw that and what they can do.”

We had a big problem with casting, especially with Ansel. It was a tough role. We ended up with the right person for the part, but it was a long road getting to that point. At least with Mary, I knew I had her. I also knew that if I’d written something Mary didn’t like, she wouldn’t have felt obliged to do it.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead: Right.

RS: She would have said, “It’s not the right thing for me, but I can see So-and-So doing it.” I felt like I’d earned it. I wrote the script, I had a vision for it, and I’ve done some shorts that led up to it. So I don’t think anything was handed to me. Keith [Calder] and Jess[ica Wu], who produced it, they’re the reason it got made.

BSR: How did they come into it?

RS: I did [my short] THE CUB in 2012. It played at a few festivals at Sundance, but really ended up premiering at Sundance in 2013. So I did that in the Summer of 2012 and around the same time I was doing the cub, I had the idea for the deprogramming thing and I thought that would probably be my next feature. At the time it was more of a dramatic thing, it wasn’t as darkly comedic. I was still figuring out my voice and what I wanted to do. After I did THE CUB, I realized that’s the kind of movie I want to keep making. I like to laugh and for things to be a little subversive and darker… funny, still.

Once I thought about the FAULTS script in those terms, that was when it started moving forward. I started working on the script – at least in my head – in the summer of 2012. Around the time that THE CUB got into Sundance, I was talking to Michael Mohan, who’s a friend of mine, a director, and he said, “You have to have a script done when you go to Sundance.”

BSR: Because people are gonna see your short and say, “What else do you have? I’d like to work with you.”

RS: Exactly. So I worked really hard to figure out how to write it. Part of that was outlining it. I just knew all I could think about was Sundance. At that point, I didn’t know if this movie was going to get made anyway. It wasn’t real, but THE CUB getting into Sundance was real. I was focusing on the now. “I’m gonna go to Sundance and have fun with THE CUB. Mary’s got a movie there too and that’ll be fun and when I come back, I’ll write the script.”

I went to Sundance with the outline, just in case anyone wanted to read it. Nobody wanted to read it, obviously. I didn’t get those types of meetings off of it, but Keith and Jess saw THE CUB on a video link and contacted me – they’re friends of friends – and said, “We should meet up and talk about if you have any feature ideas.” I was like, “Great! I’ve got one that’s 85 minutes long! It’s two people in a room. Low budget!”

When I got home, I told myself, “You’ve got a day when you’re home to relax and rest, and the next day, you’re writing.” So I wrote it in two weeks. My goal in my mind was to get that ready in time for that meeting I had set with Keith and Jess. The morning we met for brunch, I was able to pitch them the entire thing because I’d just written it. At the end they were like, “Great, let me know when you have it for us to read.” So I was like, “I did just finish it yesterday. Let me just [proofread it] and I can send it to you in a couple days.”

A couple days later I sent it to them and a week later they said they wanted to make it.

So it really was the first people I sent it to wanted to make it, ended up making it. I didn’t have a problem in that way, but in other ways it felt complicated, like getting the actor and figuring out what our budget was gonna be. So going back to Mary being involved, I really feel like it was just the script that got it made and that I knew what I wanted to do. It was nice we didn’t have to worry about casting Claire, but I don’t feel it necessarily helped or hurt us.

MEW: Yeah, and also Keith and Jess have been producers [for a while]. They’re not just gonna hire somebody because they’re someone’s husband. That’s not how it works when you’re working with legitimate producers. They want to hire talented people and from the script being as good as it was and the short being as good as it was – that combination told them, “This is somebody we can trust.”

RS: And they love Mary. They’ve been looking to work with her for a while, so for them it was kind of a win-win. But I do think that had the script gone with somebody else, they’d have said the same thing.

MEW: And there are plenty of other scripts I’ve loved that I’ve tried to get made - just because I love the scripts - that Riley’s not involved in, that have not gotten made. I’m always attaching myself to little projects, trying to help a filmmaker that I like who’s trying to get something made. They’re usually told, “You have to cast somebody more famous than her.”

BSR: They pull out that book of what everybody’s worth in each territory and say, "Can you rewrite this for Dolph Lundgren? Then we can get you money from here."

MEW: Exactly, so I’m usually a hindrance to them, to be honest, having me involved, because I’m not big enough to get things greenlit. So the fact that we got this made I think is much more of a testament to the script.

RS: It just is what it is. I don’t put Mary in my stuff because I think it’s gonna help or hurt. I put her in my stuff because she’s my favorite actor and I want to work with her. I’m writing my next thing for her even though I have no idea what the budget’s gonna be, but it’s just because I want to see Mary in this movie. It’s not because she’s my wife and I feel like it’ll help get the movie made.

MEW: I think we both have different opinions now on directors who use the same casts. Especially me as an actor, I’d be like “Why don’t you give somebody else a chance?” And now [we realize] if you’re able to do that, it’s so awesome. Why wouldn’t you want to?

RS: I think some people do it even though they shouldn’t.

MEW: Right. Trying to force something.

RS: And there are some directors out there who do it because they know it will help get their movie made. But the Wes Anderson reparatory group… that’s because he works really well with these people.

MEW: And they click!

RS: And I feel that we click really well.

BSR: It’s a strength, not a weakness.

RS: People should know too that most people don’t want to work with their spouse. It’s not an easy thing for a lot of people, but for us it is. I’d rather work with Mary than somebody else because we get each other so well. It’s all for the betterment of the film.

BSR: And you haven’t yet had the experience of coming home to say, “Well Mary, I had to cut that ten-minute scene.”

MEW: Right.

RS: I don’t think I cut any of your big stuff. There were things where, Mary’s doing an amazing performance and I’m choosing to stay on Ansel—

MEW: I think that was the only time you showed me the dailies and I was a little like, “awwwww.” But then when I saw it—

RS: She could see what we were doing with it.

MEW: Especially in context with the whole film, I was happy with it, but in that little moment I was kind of bummed.

RS: That was hard for me too. Once you see it in the film it works, but that was probably the hardest thing about being there, wanting to see her more but realizing that for the betterment of the movie, it has to be on him.

Part IV - Having confidence as a storyteller


Faults comes out this Friday in selected cities and on VOD

Writer/director Riley Stearns and actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead on FAULTS: Part II - Complex characters and roles for women

Part I - Origins of the story

I continue my talk with FAULTS writer/director Riley Stearns and actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

FAULTS is a hard movie to talk about without touching on a few character revelations that expose themselves over time. We do our best to talk around the biggest spoilers early on in this part, but those wishing to go in totally fresh might want to skip ahead to later. I'll put a big, bold "END SPOILERS" at the point where it's safe to scroll too.

In this part, we talk about writing and performing characters with layers, and Mary's thoughts on issues with the writing of many roles for women. If you want to know what it takes to attach an actress like Mary Elizabeth Winstead to your film, you won't want to miss this.

BSR: It’s funny you say you weren’t aware of the complexity of the role. I hate using the word “twist,” but there are layers here that aren’t apparent on the first viewing.

Riley Stearns: Yeah, it’s what you choose to present to the audience.

BSR: And you’ve done it in a way where we’re watching the first layer, and then after it flips, we can go back and see how it fits. It’s not like you cheated because there are a lot of movies where on a second viewing, the artifice collapses. “Oh, you were lying to make sure we didn’t figure it out,” in a way. When you’re writing, is it tricky to remember, “here’s what they’re experiencing on the first watch, but when they go back, the scene then has to play on this level” and being true to both streams?

RS: I don’t know that I thought about it that way. You have to keep certain things away from the audience obviously, certain bits of information, but I feel like a lot of the stuff the parents do, on second viewing, that was like my hint to the audience. The mom and dad and the way they perform things is a little more over the top and I talked about that with the actors. Everyone’s playing a part in the movie and that was the kind of trick that I wanted to play. Like you said, it is a twist, but as I was writing it, I don’t know that I could think about it in that way.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead: To me, it was like you were thinking of it as a slow unveiling of truth as opposed to “let me hide this in this moment.”

RS: That’s a good way of putting it. Exactly!

MEW: By the end you see what’s going on, but you’re slowly giving away the truth.

RS: I had a meeting with an actor who I wasn’t going to cast anyway and that actor called it an M. Night Shyamalan twist, which I was kind of offended by because with our twist, the movie doesn’t hinge on that. I feel like even if you know what’s gonna happen in our movie, it doesn’t affect the final product because you don’t know how it’s gonna get there.

BSR: Now as far as playing that, Mary, how are you layering your performance? It would be easy to just play Claire’s deception as sincere up until the reveal, but in watching it, it feels like you were very aware of “real Claire” and “fake Claire” and letting us get a hint that she’s wearing a mask. How do you do that?

MEW: I’m trying to remember! *laughs*

RS: Did you think of it as two characters? In your head you kind of had to compartmentalize—

MEW: I wanted it to feel very sincere in the beginning. I kind of realized as I was doing it how much I was enjoying all of it. At first I was worried about it, like, “Should I be having this much fun doing these emotional scenes?” Then I realized that was a good thing because ultimately Claire is having fun with this whole situation. She’s just like getting a kick out of it. I was going with sincerity, but also enjoying it.

BSR: Letting a little of that bleed through so on a second viewing the audience goes “oh!”

MEW: Exactly, and letting the joy of it build and build until the end of it she’s just in the happiest place because she wanted this whole thing.

RS: Mary was the one who figured out that Claire was a sociopath. Once she figured out that the character gets enjoyment out of hurting other people, that opened up the character for her.

MEW: It’s more the power she gets from being able to control other people. I bring it back to – I always forget – I think her name was [Diane] Downs? She was this woman in the early 80s or late 70s who murdered all of her children and who tried to claim it was this man who broke into her car. Farrah Fawcett played her in a TV movie. But Diane’s interviews, she’s laughing, she’s enjoying having the spotlight put on her. She’s giddy.

BSR: “I have a story people want to hear!”

MEW: Yeah, she’s she’s trying to contain it, but you can see.

RS: Claire is like, “I’m so good at hurting other people, it’s great!”

MEW: What she gets from it is she gets worshipped, and anyway, that’s the long way of saying I just had fun with it.




END SPOILERS

BSR: Do you often get offered roles like this, with this complexity?

MEW: No, I don’t think that kind of material comes around very often in general. Just look at the landscape of female roles out there. I just think it’s really hard to find material that’s exciting and roles that are gonna showcase everything that you can do. And I wasn’t even sure going into this if I’d be able to bring the complexity that would make this a great role for me. Not even until I saw the movie was I like, “Okay, I can take a deep breath.”

RS: And in a way, I think I didn’t know what I wrote until we got there and started shooting. Like, I saw what you were doing, but I don’t think you knew until the first cut, like, what it was. Which is cool and exciting! I kind of want to keep working that way, doing stuff you’re not totally aware of.

BSR: It’s always weird when you give someone a script and they come back saying “Oh, I see you’re doing this” and you’re like “I didn’t mean to, but I’ll take it!”

RS: People see stuff all the time that you didn’t intend in your work. It doesn’t make it any less that you didn’t put it there on purpose. Own that shit! I might not have realized what it was I was doing, what Claire was, until Mary started showing me.

BSR: Mary, I don’t feel like you’re typecast in the sort of roles you do, but do you feel like you’re typecast in the sorts of scripts you’re sent?

MEW: That’s interesting… I think it’s changing now. The past couple years it’s been different than it was before. It’s really interesting how one project can kind of shift the perception of how people see you, even in terms of looks and stuff. I used to get “the cute girl” and now I get “rough, haggard” because of Smashed.

RS: Or after The Thing where they thought of you as really tough.

MEW: You can always tell someone saw something else I did and thought “She’d be good for this.” I still get heroine roles or action roles, and then I get more indie, rough-and-tumble, kind of messy...

RS: Once Mary was sent a TV script and her agent said, “I asked them what they were looking for and they said, ‘A Mary Elizabeth Winstead-type.’” Mary was like, “Okay I’ll read it.” And then she ended up not getting it!

BSR: Considering you’re an actress a lot of people would like to work with, what would you like to tell writers to stop putting in their scripts for female characters? Like you’re reading it and going, “No, no.”

MEW: One thing – I think you were tweeting about this the other day and I was like, “Oh my god, you’re so right!” Character descriptions – like detailed descriptions of how they look, and how hot they are, when it’s unnecessary. If it’s important to the plot that they have blue eyes or whatever, of course, put that in there. But if it’s your vision of what the perfect woman is--

BSR: Yeah, but with the NORAD scientist we don’t need to know how large her cup size is.

MEW: Especially for me, the majority of things I get sent are “cute, but doesn’t know it, blah, blah, blah.” It’s just like, how many times can I read that? It’s become a cliché at this point, so don’t do that. When there’s a sex scene, don’t talk about how the camera lingers on certain body parts. It’s not your job, you’re not directing it, and even if you are, it’s probably best not to do that.

RS: You don’t need to put it in the script.

MEW: Stuff like that. I think you want to avoid clichés. I’m really surprised how often writers are not trying to actively avoid cliché. And it can be to a point where I can’t even finish [the script.] So it can really be the difference between getting your script read and not.

RS: At least by the person you want to read it.

MEW: I also just have a real hot button with derogatory things against women or any sort of minority person, like if you think something’s funny and you put it in there… it can really turn people off, so just make sure it’s important.

RS: That SNL bit about the Romantic Comedy Girl was one of our favorite bits, every single thing they did in that was the best commentary on that type of thing.

BSR: Especially when you lay it out like that it’s like, “oh, I did that...”

RS: I probably did that in my first script! Also, touching on the character description thing, I in general just don’t describe the characters. I say how old they are and that’s all I put in there. You want other people to envision what that character is, but you’re doing yourself a disservice when it comes to casting because you could be singling out one group of people as the type [and excluding an entirely different group] just outside of that because they weren’t your “type.”

BSR: Or they get the script and go “That’s not me.”

MEW: And that happens all the time.

RS: Or being so specific on age, so people look at it and say, “I’m not fifty so I’m not gonna read this one.” But in your head you’re thinking, “Well, it’s probably fifty but it could be younger.” There was something in FAULTS even that was, like [age] thirty to fifty. If it’s on the page, somebody reading it thinks it has weight.

Part III - Making your first movie
Part IV - Having confidence as a storyteller

Writer/director Riley Stearns and actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead on FAULTS: Part I - Origins of the story

Writer/director Riley Stearns made his first splash in the film world when his acclaimed short THE CUB debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013. That ended up opening the doors for him to write and direct his first feature, FAULTS, which premiered at last year's SXSW in Austin, Texas.



FAULTS stars Leland Orser and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who also happens to be Stearns's wife. If you don't know Mary from her acclaimed performance in Smashed, you need to rectify that immediately, but I'm willing to bet you've seen her in films as diverse as Sky High, Live Free or Die Hard, The Spectacular Now, the Death Proof half of Grindhouse, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

I saw FAULTS at last year's AFI Fest and was a big fan of it. Honestly, it'd be an impressive work even if it wasn't the product of a first-time director. It's a tense movie about a disgraced cult deprogrammer who's hired by desperate parents who want him to deprogram their daughter, who was recently taken in by a cult.

It's been playing the festival circuit for months and is finally coming out in limited release and on VOD this Friday. Recently I sat down with both Riley Stearns and Mary Elizabeth Winstead for a chat that spanned the writing of FAULTS, the issues surrounding good roles for women in film, the challenges of making a first feature, and much more...

Bitter Script Reader: Why FAULTS? Where did this come from?

Riley Stearns: The boring answer is that I’ve always been fascinated by cults—

BSR: If that’s the boring answer, this is going to be very interesting.

RS: What’s funny about that is even as a kid I was fascinated by cults and I don’t think a lot of kids are, but there was something about the idea that you could be like a really intelligent person, very strong minded and you can get sucked into something that somebody else can indoctrinate you into, so the idea of cults was definitely the impetus of that.

There was this COPS episode that I was watching with my dad when I was a kid and there was this deprogramming where the girl called the police and said, “My parents have kidnapped me and are holding me in this room.” The police came and interviewed the parents and were able to discern what was going on. And at the end they said, “Your parents know what’s best for you so you should stay with them. We’re not gonna file a report or anything like that.”

BSR: This made it to air on COPS?!

RS: I feel like this was an episode I saw when I was a kid. I tried to do research on this episode because I knew I was gonna be asked about it after I put it in some director’s statement I did and I can’t find any evidence that this episode actually exists. But in my memory it’s so real and I remember my dad saying, “They knew what was best for her,” like the parents are trying to help her. But as a kid, I realized there’s something really weird about an adult being told what to do.

And I can’t find any evidence that episode was a thing, so I’m trying not to talk about it as much, but as a kid I realized that deprogramming was the craziest, coolest thing and as I got to be an adult, I realized not a lot of people had done a story about deprogramming, at least not the way I wanted to do it. By the time I was ready to write a feature script, that idea was still there.

BSR: Is this your first feature script then?

RS: No. I’ve probably written five or six feature scripts. All of them are shit. FAULTS is the first feature script that I actually think is good. Mary would say otherwise--

Mary Elizabeth Winstead: They’re all good. They get better and better, as they should.

RS: Yeah. My first feature script ended up being 40 pages long. Since I was 18, I’ve written five things other than FAULTS. The other thing about those scripts is they were all copying other people’s styles. I’m glad I wrote them now, but the thing about them I don’t like is that they’re like [me doing] Garden State, mixed with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. My second one is a Tarantino rip-off. It still wouldn’t make a good movie, but as a writing sample it worked out well. My next was a Scott Pilgrim-style script that I still think is funny, but I don’t think it would make a good movie.

BSR: I see them going in line with Mary’s career there.

MEW: I know! Yeah! [laughs]

RS: It totally is! Those are the scripts that I was reading.

BSR: It kinda seeps in.

RS: Exactly! You write what you know, people say, but in this instance I was just copying what I knew. It led to me finding my voice, which is what I think was important.

BSR: My first feature was a procedural and when I took it into my screenwriting class, they were like, “This is great. I can totally see the LAW & ORDER cast in it!” Yes, yes, you nailed me.

RS: You have to do that though. It’s very rare for a writer to come out and have it but just their voice. And even now I feel like I’m probably copying somebody.

BSR: It’s like a synthesis. The Tarantino thing. He takes a little bit from different people and mixes it into something new. With FAULTS, did you set out deliberately to write something that was low-budget and easy to produce?

RS: Definitely. I wrote it thinking that I would have to Kickstart it, because we did that with THE CUB. We got like $5000 for THE CUB, thinking for the next thing we could get $50,000-$100,000, thinking I could do this on my own, not realizing that had I done this on my own, I wouldn’t have been able to find the motel room. [We wanted to make the motel room] its own thing. It’s very brown, and a lot of production design. If I was doing that on my own it would have been not as good.

BSR: Does working within the limitations of a low-budget kind of define how you’re gonna create the characters and the themes you’re working with, because you’ve gotta have something compelling enough to stay in that room?

RS: I felt like the story itself could sustain being in a small, contained location. I’ve always been good at character. I feel like I’m good at each character has their own voice. A lot of scripts you read, every character sounds like that writer’s version of the character. I feel like one thing FAULTS had was, here’s this weird, eccentric deprogrammer and the subject who he was deprogramming. It wasn’t necessarily budget-driven at all. I feel like even if I had a lot of money, that would have been the same thing that I wrote. But location was the big thing about budget for sure.

BSR: Now Mary, I had a question for you. As Riley’s writing this, I assume you know you’re gonna act in it. Were you feeding him “I’d love to play this kind of part” or “Don’t do this because I hate when I see this in scripts?”

MEW: I don’t know... I was so excited as I was getting the pages of what he was writing but I was also really scared because the character he was writing for me just seemed really, really hard. She’s sort of enigmatic and doesn’t give much away, but also has to be really complex and I was sort of like “I don’t know how to do this.” I loved Leland’s character so much, Ansel, and was like “this character’s sort of flashy and fun!”

BSR: “Can you make him a woman in his twenties?”

RS: The only thing that Mary said that influenced the script in any way was we got to a point where, like 40 pages in… she said, “Ansel’s so cool and eccentric. Can Claire have any of that?” And so the next day I wrote the scene where she does the screaming thing, just because I wanted her to do something weird, and it ended up being one of my favorite parts in the whole movie.

MEW: At that point, Claire was just doing a lot of explaining about what the cult is, so I kind of was poking him a little bit, “give me something.” And I still was scared to play the role even at the end, but then once we were doing it, it was like the most fun I’ve ever had in a role, but I didn’t know what I was going to do with it until we were really going.”

RS: What I love about that is that it is a hard part and I didn’t realize it was such a hard part. Like I knew she could do it, so I didn’t even think about it as being a difficult role, which is why it was funny to me when she read it and was like “This is really hard!”

MEW: And I was worried he was trusting me too much, even when we were shooting it--

RS: I never give her notes because it’s always what I want. I’m like, “That was perfect!”

MEW: We usually do one or two takes and I was like, “Are you sure? Are you sure!?”

BSR: “In a month you’re not gonna be sitting in an editing room cursing me, right?”

MEW: Exactly!

Come back tomorrow as we delve a little more into the plot twists of FAULTS and I ask Mary what kind of writing it takes to interest an actress of her caliber... and what she hates seeing in scripts.

Pre-order FAULTS on iTunes or Vimeo.

Part II - Complex characters and roles for women
Part III - Making your first movie
Part IV - Having confidence as a storyteller  

FAULTS ironically has very few faults of its own

Summing up Riley Stearns's feature debut, FAULTS, without blowing too many details that are best left discovered for oneself is a tricky prospect. What I can tell you is what it displays an abundance of from its writer/director: confidence.

I read the script about a year ago and it was basically catnip to me. I'd venture that some 75% of the film centers on the dynamic between two characters while confined to one hotel room. It's the type of scenario that leaves a writer nowhere to hide: there's no place for pyrotecnics, no kinetic car chases or action scenes. Every bit of tension has to come from those two characters and the claustrophobia of their location. There's no half-assing the writing here. The characters have to pop, they have to have a clear conflict and when you're limited to a duel of words rather than fisticuffs, the dialogue has to be sharp as a jagged piece of glass.

And then once you get all that right on the page and pull off an engaging read, some poor director has to come along and make it look like more than a filmed stageplay. You can probably think of all of the ways a terrified helmer might add a little extra spice out fear that his audience would become bored. These include: wild and crazy angles, which wouldn't be complete without frantic editing, and on-the-nose scoring to add gravitas to the quiet, subtle dialogue.

Stearns doesn't fall back on any of those crutches. That takes balls, especially on your first film. The fact that FAULTS also has to skillfully mix humor with a lot of intensity and creepiness makes this even more of an achievement. I've seen a lot of films that have attempted to mix tones in this way and it soon becomes apparent that there are a lot of ways to fall on your face. A misplaced joke can destroy tension rather than heighten it. A bad gag at the wrong point has the potential to turn the film goofy right when it can hurt the most. Finding that tone and making sure the actors play within that space is the director's responsibility and Stearns hits the bullseye as surely as if he were Robin Hood.

So if you're tempted to think that a film centered largely on two actors in one room is an "idiot proof" prospect for a director, you need to realize there are probably about fifty ways FAULTS could have gone wrong, even with it starting from an incredibly solid script.

It helps that FAULTS has a very solid cast. Leland Orser plays Ansel, a former cult deprogramming expert whose since fallen on hard times. This is a man at such a low point in his life that he steals not just towels from his hotel room, but the battery that powers his TV remote. Following one of his seminars, he's approached by a couple played by Beth Grant and Chris Ellis. Their daughter Claire has fallen into the clutches of a cult and they believe Ansel is the only one who can save her. Ansel may be at the point in his life where he doesn't give a shit, but he needs money, and deprogramming Claire is an opportunity for him to make enough to clear some pressing debts.

Thus Ansel kidnaps Claire and has her brought to a motel room so that he can spend the next five days psychologically breaking her down and undoing what the cult did to her. Ansel knows how to challenge her beliefs all while weakening Claire's resolve. What we witness is the gradual breaking of Claire, in a very strong performance from Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Winstead also happens to be Stearns's wife, but don't confuse this connection for any sort of nepotism or vanity project. Winstead does very good work in a role that is a lot more challenging than it appears for much of a first viewing. Suffice to say, if Winstead impressed you in diverse roles such as Smashed and Scott Pilgrim you'll probably enjoy seeing her play yet another entirely different sort of character here. (And yes, add me to the chorus that thinks Winstead was robbed of an Oscar nomination for Smashed a few years back.)

As the film is not in wide release, that's probably all I should say about the plot. As seemingly straightforward as the premise is, FAULTS zigs and zags in ways that you won't always see coming. It probably isn't giving anything away to heap praise on how Orser and Winstead gradually evolve their dynamic, allowing for a few shifts in the relationship that aren't even immediately apparent until the script specifically underlines them.

And through all of this, Stearns's steady hand shows. Most of these two-handers are shot with long takes with little camera movement. Occasionally there might be a slow push-in or a well-timed pan, but this doesn't feel like a film where the director went out of his way in leaving the editing room to save him, if need be. Many scenes are given room to breathe, playing out in takes that hold on the performers and invite us to register the subtlety in their performances. The score is modulated similarly, as it's completely absent from many scenes, allowing its limited usage to make much more impact.

At present, FAULTS is still doing the festival circuit. I saw it this past weekend at AFI Fest, though Screen Media Films currently has it scheduled for a March 6, 2015 release to theatres and VOD. If this sort of film appeals to you the way it does to me, I hope you'll check it out.