April 24, 2009 02:14PM EDT

Q&A: The Exploding Girl

Bradley Rust Gray's The Exploding Girl is a quiet, intimate film made up of simple moments in time, amplified by strong acting and knowing direction. At the film's premiere last night at AMC Village VII, Gray and his able crew were received warmly by an appreciative audience who had many questions about the making of the film.

The relationship between rising star Zoe Kazan (granddaughter of Elia Kazan and the daughter of screenwriters Nicholas Kazan and Robin Swicord) and the adorably charming Mark Rendall (who was at TFF '07 with Charlie Bartlett) develops in a New York not usually seen on screen. In fact, Gray told me afterwards that when he showed the film in Spain, the audience asked where the location was: Gray's New York was not the city with which they as filmgoers were cinematically acquainted. For that reason, Gray feels that Tribeca is the perfect audience for The Exploding Girl. "There are no establishing skyline shots. But in New York, audiences know [one scene] is outside of Katz's Diner. They recognize Tompkins Square Park. We shot right here in downtown New York, and it feels really nice to come back here and show the film."

Gray cast Kazan before there was even a script. "She auditioned for another project of mine (that got put on hold), and she didn't get the job. (Sometimes people just aren't right for the part.) But I knew I still wanted to work with her. So I called her up and said, 'I want you for this movie.' She said, 'What's it about?' I said, 'I don't know.' The two of us went on walks and talked about it... The first draft of the script was radically different from what the film is now. At one point I suddenly saw the character. I wrote it in five or six days—it just came out."

Gray co-edits with his wife, filmmaker So Yong Kim (Treeless Mountain, now playing). An audience member asked about that process, and noted that the co-editor relationship can sometimes be like being married. Did they fight a lot? Kim answered, "We both like to edit, so the fighting was mostly about who got to edit." Gray added, "I respect So's opinion... We gather a lot of material, and she's able to find just the right moments in the footage. And we had a lot of footage—over 40 hours."

Rendall was asked about how Gray directs his actors, and whether there was much improvisation. "It got to the point where I just scanned the stuff we were going to shoot the next day. Bradley woud say, 'Fuck the script. Say whatever you want, as long as it's not in the script.' He got a lot of spontaneous moments with that tool. In the end, though, there were lots of takes. There were some improv moments, but mostly what ended up in the film was what was on the page." When asked about his return to Tribeca, Rendall summed it up: "I love New York. Thumbs up to Tribeca!"
 

---

The Exploding Girl screens throughout the Festival.

Read more Festival Q&As.