Josh Lawson has been working as an actor for almost two decades, most recently appearing in stuff like THE CAMPAIGN, ANCHORMAN 2, and Showtime's HOUSE OF LIES, but for his first go-around as a director, he went back to his native Australia and rounded up a few of his peers for a sex comedy titled THE LITTLE DEATH. The film is brave and often quite hilarious (as I discuss in my review) as it explores the issue of sex in a way that we’re not typically used to: how it impacts mature, functional relationships, and how what’s perceived as “perversity” can sometimes be the purest expression of love (or just, you know, messed up).
Lawson is an incredibly eloquent, enthusiastic guy, and talking with him about his film taught me a lot about his ambitions, his experiences as an actor, and the difficulties of getting a movie like this made and distributed. I’m sure if I had more time with him, he could’ve given me another half-hour or so worth of answers, but me managed to pack a ton of info into the little time we spoke together.
And I even managed to sneak a HOUSE OF LIES question in there. I couldn’t help myself, and if you’ve seen his work on the show, you probably understand why.
VINYARD: This is your first movie as a writer and director. Obviously, you’ve been an actor in Australia and the U.S. for a long time-
LAWSON: Too long!
VINYARD: What inspired you to get behind the camera?
LAWSON: Writing first. Writing came up first. I always loved writing, always tinkered away with it. I went to acting school at 17, then throughout my three years there at night at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, I started writing theater. And we started performing it ourselves. Got out, and started writing theater. Did a bunch of plays, independent plays, in Sydney- I’m giving you the nutshell thing here- got a job writing for a sitcom through those plays in Australia, so I started out writing for TV. Then I moved into writing for film. This was not the first screenplay I wrote, this was in fact the third screenplay I wrote. But it was the first time it really gained some traction.
By the way, I’m going to go back to those original screenplays. I’m gonna fix them up, because I’ve learned so much since then. I try and save all my work, some better than others. Then I finished this, and went, “You know, I love this too much. I can’t imagine giving it to another director. I just have to do it myself.” So that’s where the directing thing came in, it was just sort of protecting my baby.
VINYARD: So it never occurred to you to helm it yourself?
LAWSON: No, I wasn’t writing it with me in mind to direct, but once I directed, it would never occur to me to give it to anyone else.
VINYARD: Would you direct your other two screenplays?
LAWSON: Oh, definitely! And they’re all different, lots of different genres and stuff. I would do it because…I just wanna make stuff, and I hope I get better. Sometimes, I’ll probably make lots of mistakes. Some movies will be better than others, like any director. But who cares! What I love about Woody Allen is that he makes so many movies. I don’t think you remember the bad ones. I don’t. Of course, there are some that aren’t as good, in my opinion, and who cares about my opinion? That’s one person’s opinion! I just remember what really connected with me in his enormous oeuvre of work, and I think that if you just keep making stuff, people will ultimately remember the stuff that worked and not the bad stuff.
VINYARD: It’s funny you mention Woody Allen, because obviously one of the films this movie reminded me of EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX * BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK.
LAWSON: Big influence on me, yeah. I love that film. Particularly the Gene Wilder story with the sheep. You know what it was that I took from that story and put in LITTLE DEATH? How truthfully Gene Wilder deals with that outrageous situation. If you ever get a chance to rewatch that story alone, do. Because he’s dealing with falling in love with a sheep, it’s ridiculous, but Gene Wilder makes it so truthful that you kind of buy it. I think that’s what I was trying to do in THE LITTLE DEATH, is that you can get away with anything provided that people react to it truthfully. I hope that it always felt real, even though the situations were outrageous.
VINYARD: Was that the inspiration for you to attack something as complicated and loaded of a subject?
LAWSON: Well, it felt like we hadn’t had a good sex anthology since maybe EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX. I also felt like it was a fun way to discuss what we all want to discuss all the time, love, relationships and sex. I always find that at any dinner party, once people have had enough to drink, we always end up talking about sex, do you find that? I think people do, I think it’s human nature, actually. The alcohol lowers our inhibitions a little bit, and we kinda finally talk about what we all want to talk about, that naughty taboo subject of sex. Who are we fucking? How are we fucking? So ultimately, I just decided, “Look, if we’re all wanna talk about it, let’s just make a film about it so we can cut stragiht to the chase!”
Having said that, I don’t think the film is entirely about that. In fact, I don’t think the heart of the film is really sex. I think the heart of the film is love, and honesty, and communication. But the gravy on top is sex, I think.
VINYARD: What led you to land on the different fetishes and the different sections of the film?
LAWSON: Yeah, ‘cause there were countless fetishes to choose from, my god.
VINYARD: Just go on the internet.
LAWSON: If you think of it and you’re bored one day, just look up a list of paraphelias. What people are getting off on is amazing! You find some fetishes that are so specific, you’re like, oh my god, there must be so many people that are into this because it has a name! Like someone’s documented it and categorized it! I think that was an interesting discovery for me, and that was, “Oh, it’s just weird to me, but that’s only because I’m not into it. It doesn’t make the fetish weird. It just means that doesn’t get get me off.” So I never wanted to judge any of the characters for having a fetish, ‘cause I think we all have fetishes. What’s normal for me might be really weird for you, and vice versa, but that doesn’t make any one of us more or less weird than the other- I mean, I don’t know, I haven’t heard your fetish.
I wanted to make sure that the fetishes that were chosen required planning. I thought it was really interesting to see how characters would organize getting off. How much time before they eventually had an orgasm would they plan the orgasm? Which is why I called it THE LITTLE DEATH, because it was ultimately like, how much work do you put into having the perfect orgasm? That’s what was funny to me.
VINYARD: Of all the characters, what made you want to play the foot fetishist/wannabe rapist?
LAWSON: The not wannabe rapist! That’s the whole issue, that’s the last thing he wants to be! He was the reluctant rapist! Paul’s such a great character, because his motivation was so clear. He just wants to please his girlfriend. Everything he does in the film is to that end, and it’s so easy to play a character that’s just so clear. Or, as he says to the guy who plays my friend in the film, who is my brother, he says to Glen, “I just want to make her happy! I just want a way to make her happy, I’ll do anything!” So it’s fun to play that, because he’s like a dog with a bone. He’s got laser vision.
But I never wrote it for me in mind for it. In fact, another actor pulled out towards the end of pre-production, so I slipped in the role at the last minute. And I’m really glad I did, even though I was spinning a lot of plates, because Bojana (Novakovic) and I go way back. We went to drama school together, and we have a long friendship. She was so wonderful in that role, and so brave and giving in a role that’s…kinda traumatic in a lot of ways. She was really awesome.
I never write with anyone in mind, honestly. I try not to. But I would do it again. I would step into the character again. I had fun.
VINYARD: But you didn’t originally plan on acting in the movie?
LAWSON: No, no, that wasn’t my plan at all. My original plan was just to focus on directing the first time. The first thing I did, I didn’t want to mess up, so I said, “No distractions, no acting, no going into makeup first, none of that stuff. You have one job to do, and you’re going to do that. But also, we didn’t have much money, and I knew that if I did Paul, I was gonna charge me for playing Paul. Every cent counted at that point, so I thought, “Alright, let’s just tighten this budget a bit, and I can get it down quickly. ’Cause I know what the film is, I know the lines, we’ll be fine.” So that’s how it ended up.
VINYARD: Was the budget one of the reasons you went back to Australia to shoot the movie?
LAWSON: Yeah, lots of reasons. I shopped it around a little bit here, to no avail. I have such great relationships with actors back in Australia, just ‘cause I grew up with them, and I know them, and I know actors who don’t necessarily have big names who are awesome. Some of those actors in the film are not famous by any stretch of the imagination, but they’re all amazing, and I wanted to give a bunch of actors who you may not have known before a chance to do some work. In fact, the woman who plays Monica in the phone-sex, the call center operator, that’s her first acting job on film & TV.
VINYARD: Wow.
LAWSON: Crazy, she’s amazing. And I love the opportunity of giving people work. Obviously, you can do that in any country, but I felt my relationships were a little stronger back in Australia. The budget scheme was that we found a way to make the film on a very small budget. That was thanks to Jamie Hilton and Michael Petroni, the producers. They found a way to make it work with not much money. We had a great post-house, and sound mix, so we got pretty lucky.
VINYARD: You mentioned before that there aren’t a lot of sex anthologies, but I’d say there aren’t a lot of honest American sex comedies period. They’re all very juvenile, and kind of teen-based. Do you think that may have played a part in why it was tricky to shop around? Do you think taboos are less restrictive out there?
LAWSON: You know it’s interesting. Maybe in terms of filmmaking. Certainly the studio system. We’re not a studio system country, we’re a government funded country. So I think you tend to get a little more arthouse films made in Australia on a bigger budget, because it’s great that Australia is able to do that, make riskier decisions. But to go back to your point of why Americans don’t do that, we did a bunch of test screenings as we were cutting THE LITTLE DEATH. One of the questions we put on the questionnaire was, “What does this film remind you of?” Can you imagine what we got?
VINYARD: AMERICAN PIE?
LAWSON: 85% of people went, “I can’t think of anything.”
VINYARD: Exactly.
LAWSON: That’s why I think Americans struggle with that. They couldn’t compare it to things. And I think in the studio system, because they’re trying to protect their money, they need to be able to say, “Well this film is like this success that has preceded it.” They don’t want to say, “Well this is unusual, I’m gonna sink $10 million into it,” ‘cause that’s a risky investment! We don’t know if this is a proven formula. They need to be able to say, “This formula’s worked in the past,” or, “From a business point of view, this risk is minimal.” So I think that’s why.
I don’t think it’s necessarily cultural. I think Americans are just as happy to talk about sex as Australians are, but I think that from a business point of view, it just doesn’t make as much sense.
VINYARD: One of my favorite aspects of the movie is that you end with the complete Monica story. You have the four other stories intercut throughout the movie, but you end it with the entire telephone scatalogia story. I wanted to know what led you to that decision. Was there ever a plan to intercut that along with the other stories?
LAWSON: The film was written as five chapters: one, two, three, four, five. Because I felt as a reader, because I was trying to get money for it, it was easier to digest that as chapters as opposed to intercutting on the page. I felt there was just too much, too many characters to deal with on the page. But that story’s the only one that doesn’t have a time-jump in it. It’s fifteen minutes or so, chronologically, it doesn’t skip time. So it didn’t make sense to cut it up. I always wanted to put it at the end in it’s entirety, but there were discussions where we had the distributors back in Australia and even our producers going, “You should try it.” We did, and it didn’t work, obviously, because as you cut back to another story, that story goes into the next day, and then you cut back to the phone call. It sorta got confusing, where you were like, “Oh, is the phone call going for days? Is this the next day?” Because you want the film to move together at the same pace. And of course, at the very end, you see all the stories wrap up at the same time, so in fact, there’s a really tricky time…you can’t make one story jump forward faster than the other, because they end up ending at the same place. It’s almost like PULP FICTION-esque, in that it needs to make sense that there are some stories that are moving parallel with each other and not moving faster than the other, because these two incidences need to coincide at a very specific moment.
It was a bit of a Rubik’s Cube, to cut them all, but I’m very happy with the decision to keep the Monica and Sam story in one piece, because I think the momentum builds so well by doing that. And I think it’s a bold decision, actually. I like that we end with this separate little coda, in a way.
VINYARD: I love that you see characters form each story pop up in other stories. Was there ever a desire to go more or less into the interconnectivity?
LAWSON: That was a balance. Because too much, it became too coincidental, and it becomes distracting I think. Too little, and it’s not rewarding enough. I felt like we did the right amount. There was a film by the Stella guys called THE TEN. I really like THE TEN a lot, in fact I like those guys very much. I think they’re excellent filmmakers. They did the characters walking past each other, almost bumping into each other, in that movie really, reallyw ell. It’s not like the characters are like, “Oh these characters are brothers,” or, “Oh, these characters are best friends.” It was like, “Oh, this character is waiting for them at the cafe,” or something. I loved that they almost met, but didn’t.
When Evie is walking out of the doctor’s office, Richard is waiting there, and they kind of look at each other, but they don’t know each other. I think that’s a cool thing. I think it’s a very rewarding thing for the audience, when they see characters from earlier pop up later, and think, “Oh fuck, that’s right!” ‘Cause you get a flash of what has preceded. It’s so easy to forget what you’ve seen, because so much has happened, so when you see characters from previous stories pop up, you go, “My god, that’s right, we’ve really covered a lot of ground!” And you do cover a lot of ground. Five stories, and within those stories, a lot happens.
VINYARD: The sex offender might be my favorite running joke of the whole thing.
LAWSON: Oh, he’s great. Kim Gyngell, in Australia, is a very well-known comic actor. I grew up watching him on TV, and he’s an idol of mine. I worked with him on a TV show called THE LIBRARIANS in Australia. He’s not only one of the nicest humans you’ll ever meet, he’s one of the most talented. When he said yes to this role, it was like a dream come true for me. He was just perfect for it. I love that role, I love Steve. I love that we don’t know what he’s done. I love that you’re a bit torn at the end- I’m not gonna say the big spoiler- but you’re a bit torn. You don’t know whether you love him or hate him. I think he’s a very loved character, and people do mention him a lot afterwards, going, “I love him! Or did I? I’m not sure if he was a bad guy or a good guy.” I’m happy you like Steve, he was great.
VINYARD: His role is pretty much purely comedic, but one of the things I love about the movie is that it mixes comedy and drama. In terms of the balance, for your first time writing and directing a movie, was that ever a concern, like “Maybe I shouldn’t go this far with the comedy,” or, “Maybe I should make it a little deeper?”
LAWSON: It’s a tough balancing act, because if you care too much about what the audience is going to think, then you lose your own vision, and you end up trying to please everybody. And you can’t do that, because everybody’s different. There is no film that’s ever been made, ever, that’s pleased everyone, so get that idea out of your head! It’s easier said than done, because as a filmmaker, you want to please everybody. You want to be loved by everybody. But you just can’t do that, so don’t let that motivate you, is what I keep telling myself. It’s comedy, and you want to make people laugh, so you want to be able to connect with people.
Was there ever a concern of going too far? Absolutely, yeah, because I didn’t want to push people to the point where they could never come back and laugh at another joke in the film. You needed to push them just far enough that it would make them uncomfortable, and you would give them a new kind of laugh, and a surprising cinematic experience, but not so far that if you were to make a joke afterwards, they’d be like, “No, no no. No way. I’m not coming back from the last thing, because you pushed me too far. You’ve offended me, or you’ve upset me.”
Now, obviously, some people are going get offended by this film. You know why? Because people get offended by every film, ever. It’s so easy to offend people. So don’t worry about that. People were offended by the original MUPPET SHOW film, because they said it had cruelty to animals! Whether it did or not, that’s not my place to say, but anytime I tell people that, they laugh! My point is, don’t worry about offending people. That’s a dumb reason not to make anything or not to do something. Just do something because you think it needs to be done, it needs to be said, and stand by it as a filmmaker! Live or die by your vision. In my experience, most people have loved this film, but of course some people haven’t, like any film. But I think the second a filmmaker tries to be popular is the second that they lose their voice as a filmmaker.
VINYARD: I wasn’t going to mention HOUSE OF LIES, but it also does a great job of balancing comedy and drama. Obviously, your character is the comic relief and the butt of the joke-
LAWSON: Yeah, he is for sure. He’s kind of a clown.
VINYARD: But was the show ever an influence on you in terms of balancing the pathos with the humor?
LAWSON: I certainly learned a lot from the cast and crew of HOUSE OF LIES. Just working with people like Don Cheadle and Kristen Bell, and I’m able to watch these actors who I really respect and how they balance their craft. As an actor, you’re able to pick and choose all the things you think would work well in future projects. But Stephen Hopkins, who’s an executive producer on the show and was one of the main directors in the first three seasons, big influence on me. I’d ask him a lot of questions, and mirror him sometimes in my style, because I think he is a wonderful visionary director. I’m really lucky to have worked with him.
Definitely there are things I’ve cherry-picked from all my acting jobs and used as a director, and that’s one of the great things about being an actor-director, a luxury that directors who aren’t actors don’t have. When you’re an actor, you get to see different styles of directing, but other directors don’t get to do that. They only know their directing style. I get to watch other directors direct films. You don’t often see, “Hey, this is my director friend. He’s going to watch how I direct.” You know? But as an actor, you get dozens of different directors, and you get to see, “Oh, that works!” or, “I won’t do that, I will do that.” By the time you become your own director, you’ve had all these influences by all these great directors, so I think you get the best of all worlds as an actor-director. I’m grateful for my journey to this moment.
VINYARD: Last question really quick. You said you’re going to go to work on those last two screenplays. How soon can we expect ‘em?
LAWSON: As soon as possible. Look, this is a battle that is a big battle for me: how do you make something fast? Because if you want to make something interesting, I could see the journey being another five or six years to getting money for it again. I can’t do that again. I don’t want to wait another five or six years to make another movie, I just want to make it. So I’m having discussions with my friends and people that I want to produce with, going, “How can we make it fast? How can we get it out there? How can we distribute it in a world where illegal downloads are killing theatrical release?”
In Australia, we were, at one point, the most popular illegal download in Australia, and the second most illegal download in the world, just behind THE HOBBIT, for about two days. Millions of people are illegally downloading the film. That’s a whole bigger discussion we don’t have time for, but how can you distribute digitally and monetize it? Well, I don’t know the answer to that. There has to be an answer, because that’s the way distribution for independent films is headed. It’s frustrating, because I don’t think that, when these people illegally downloading a film like THE LITTLE DEATH, I don’t think they’re thinking that the decision is between, “Do I illegally download it, or not illegally download it and buy it?” I don’t think that’s the decision they’re making. I think the decision is, “Do I illegally download it, or not watch it at all?” You know what I mean? They’ll just go, “If it costs money, and it’s complicated, I’ll watch something else. I’ll illegally download something else!” So in a way, I’m grateful that they’re watching it, because I know they weren’t gonna buy it anyway. You know what I mean?
I’m trying to be the glass is half full about it, because, you know…
VINYARD: It is what it is.
LAWSON: It is what it is, it’s a losing battle. I’m just trying to figure out how to make a film fast, how to distribute it where I can maintain control and monetize it, and if you have any ideas, tell me about it, because I am racking my fucking brain trying to think about it. But I know that’s where the future of distribution is, I just think that we haven’t cracked it yet.
THE LITTLE DEATH will open in select cinemas on June 26th.
