April 30, 2010 07:15PM EDT

Q&A: Monogamy

Director Dana Adam Shapiro
Photo by Larry Busacca/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival

As part of his introduction of Monogamy, director Dana Adam Shapiro told an expectant audience, "We shot this movie all over downtown New York and in Brooklyn, and watching it with this home crowd so far has just been amazing." Little did he know how prophetic his words were; later that night, Monogamy took home first prize in the 2010 Best New York Narrative Competition.

Shapiro, who was nominated for an Oscar for his documentary Murderball in 2005, wrote this drama with Evan M. Wiener, and the result is a beautifully shot, emotionally raw look at the struggle for intimacy framed by one man’s growing obsession with another woman. Wedding photographer Theo (Chris Messina) has a side business called Gumshoot, where people hire him to take unposed, voyeuristic photos of them at agreed times or places. His business takes a darker, more erotic turn when an exhibitionist hires him to photograph her; his increasing fascination with the mystery woman begins to chip away at his relationship with fiancée Nat (Rashida Jones), leaving them in the lurch when it comes to their impending wedding.

Weiner said that the idea came from an article about a fellow who has a business like Gumshoot. "As we decided to start talking about it as a movie, what we realized was that it was actually more interesting to learn about the guy who was taking the photographs rather than the people who were being photographed, and then Dana realized that he would want to start steering it towards something personal, that we would have this element of it, of a thriller, of a suspense kind of story just because voyeurism is always exciting, it’s always interesting, but then let’s really dig deep into a guy who would be doing this and see if we find anything universal."

As it turns out, plenty of the cast and crew did relate to Nat and Theo’s issues. Shapiro said, "No one’s married [in real life] so I think there was like a lot of—everybody’s going through some of the [same] stuff... There was just a lot of relationship talk."

An important character in Monogamy is New York City itself—specifically Brooklyn. "Call times are very early, like 4 AM sometimes, so I chose locations very close to my house," Shapiro quipped. "That is actually true, but not because for that reason. The bar is the bar that I hang out at—again, not for convenience or anything like that, but just, I love that bar and I love that park and I ride my bike over the Brooklyn Bridge and every time I’m thinking how cinematic it is, and I look around that bar and I just love the way the bar looks... I live in Carroll Gardens and a lot of those locations are literally around the corner from my house, or the tennis court where we first meet Subgirl [Meital Dohan] is where I play tennis. As you’re walking around the city, there are so many good places to shoot, but this—one of the things we wanted to do, New York has been shot so many times so well, so we talked a lot about, well, how can we shoot New York that’s different?"

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Monogamy caught the eye of the Tribeca Film Festival jurors, winning Best New York Narrative Feature—find out where and when you can catch it before the Festival is over!