Durkin's feature debut, Martha Marcy May Marlene, made its way to theaters Friday as one of 2011's most critically acclaimed efforts. Starring Elizabeth Olsen in her own shattering debut as a cult escapee whose refuge with her sister and brother-in-law (Sarah Paulson and Hugh Dancy) is riven by flashbacks and other paranoiac delusions, Martha is both a textbook example of modest, mood-driven low-budget filmmaking and a case study in collaboration: The film was co-produced and developed in concert with Durkin's partners at Borderline Films, which he founded with multi-hyphenate peers Josh Mond and Antonio Campos.
Durkin recently spoke to Movieline about conceiving, casting, shaping, making and living with Martha, one of the more rousing indie success stories of this or any year.
I've read more and more into your background over the last nine months as this film made the festival rounds, but let me hear it from you: How did you get into filmmaking?
I was really into writing short fiction and also photography when I was a kid. I kind of always knew I wanted to be a filmmaker, but I never really did it. I was a lot more focused on sports growing up.
Really?
Yeah, I was a soccer player, and I was really into basketball. Soccer was very much my focus. I went to my first college to play soccer. And then as I got there, I just had this realization that I'd had this idea of being a filmmaker in the back of my head for so long, and I was writing fiction and taking pictures and merging those two, and about two and a half years into college I decided to transfer -- and I got into NYU. Once I got in there and started making films, I met Josh [Mond] and Antonio [Campos], my two partners, and we just immediately started working. And we never looked back.
How did that partnership develop? How did you determine what you wanted and that you could or should go for it?
Josh and I were in the same class where you make these one-minute films, and we were in the same group. We just started making these short black-and-white films together. And we started talking about film in general; we both wanted to use NYU to find our crew and start our company. Naturally working together and becoming friends, we started to do that, and then we met Antonio soon after and started collaborating with him. It was a very gradual process. That's just what our team became, with a few other people. We had the same goals -- to have a company -- and we started that company in school. But then we thought, "How are we going to transition so we can make films?" We started to do music videos, small commercials -- anything we could get. We worked in casting on the side. And we decided to share all the money we made evenly to support the projects. At first, Josh and I were doing music videos while Antonio was writing Afterschool. So it was this idea of knowing how to internally develop projects and making sure that we could take care of each other and focus our energies on making films. It just kept continuing to grow from there; there was never a time when we said, "OK, we're gonna do this now!" It just grew and grew and never stopped.
How did Martha come about?
Martha was an idea I first had when I got out of school. I was thinking about what I could do as a first feature, and I had this idea about making a modern-day cult film. That was it to begin with. I just started writing and reading and meeting people, then writing more and reading more and building and building. It gradually became what it was.
Did you have this genre in mind for it -- the psychological thriller?
Yeah. Those are the kinds of films that I like. Even in my two films at NYU, one was like a horror film and the other was like a thriller; it was pretty dark. That's just been my interest since... forever. When I was a little kid, I loved horror films. I always liked being scared. So I think it was inevitable. And that was one of the things that drew me to it -- I was terrified of cults. I think that probably drew me in -- being scared of groups and conforming with them. So it was always going to be that.
And where it really took its shape was when I met somebody who told me about her experience -- the first few weeks after, and how disorienting it was. She was lying to everyone, she thought they were following her. And when I heard that, that's when I decided that would be the time for me to focus on. Up to that point, I had read about all the periods of cult process and getting out -- five years later, rehabilitation, or how someone got it. I just decided after that meeting it would be the place to go.
The filmmaking's great, but this movie seems to really come together in the casting -- this blend of newcomers and veterans? How was it assembled?
For me, how you combine the acting with the script is the most important. Everything else comes after that.
I mean, just get it in focus!
Yeah! Acting is very much the priority. The cast was pretty much entirely handpicked by my casting director, Susan Shopmaker. I think that a lot of times, director and producers don't let casting directors do their jobs. When you really collaborate with somebody -- and I try to do this with everybody I work with -- you fully collaborate and hire somebody because of their talent. Let them do their work, as long as you know you're on the same page and you're making the same movie and you're working with them. Susan I've known for years. I worked for her for a long time. She cast all of my movies at Borderline; she always has. She's amazing, and I've just let her do her thing. Basically she handpicked a lot of the cast, and there were a couple people I knew. For Martha, we wanted an unknown actress, so we held open casting for three or four weeks; we'd see every unknown actress we could see. They came in, and Lizzie was the best.
So for filmmakers getting started, would you recommend hiring the casting director as kind of the casting process itself?
Well, now we just have our people, so it's hard. But when we were producing things, we'd always say, "The casting director is the first person to get on board." And I always tell this to students. I think the reason our student films went well is because we had proper casting director, and we had good actors from the very beginning. At least if you have good actors, you're at a certain level. But also make sure it's a casting director whose tastes you respect and who understands where you're going. There are always times when you're collaborating with anyone when they read your script and they have someone in mind for a part, but it's not what you want. And you work through that, and you figure out you want.
Was it as clear to you on the set as it might have been in the editing room or to the viewer what kind of work this cast -- and Lizzie in particular -- was delivering?
Yeah. I knew there was something very special happening. Everybody did. Everybody felt it. The other actors... we were so impressed by it right away: It's her second film she'd ever shot, and it's her first leading role. And the first film she shot, their last week and our first week overlapped. She'd only been shooting movies for four weeks. But she comes in and she works like John [Hawkes] or Hugh or Sarah. She's prepared, she's ready, she's going. You're not pulling anything out of her. A lot of times with young actors, you have to pull a performance out of them -- even if they're great and talented and you get a great thing in the end, it's a lot of work. The story I always tell is that we had no prep time. She was shooting her other movie. We had two auditions; we talked in those auditions, but after that, we only met once for one hour. She asked a few questions, I told her a few things, and she said, "OK, I think I've got what I need." I said, "OK! See you on set!" and we showed up the first morning and started going. It was amazing.
Her face is so incredibly evocative, even when it seems still or expressionless. How soon did you realize what you had there?
In the audition. We saw it on the set, but in the audition, it was something I was looking for. I made a short film called Doris, and Rosemarie DeWitt and Paul Sparks were in it. Rosemarie is a friend of ours, and she did it as a favor, and Rosemarie's character didn't have a single line in the movie. I just decided, as coverage, I would shoot her each scene and let her react to everything else. And as I was cutting the movie, I realized that the performance happening on Rosemarie's face was just better than everything else. So I changed the name of the movie to Doris and focused entirely on her character.
I loved that experience, and I love films that silently capture that emotion. So I knew that's how I wanted to approach Martha as well. When we were auditioning, I was looking for that -- almost unknowingly at the time. But I just that in Lizzie's first audition -- that she could convey a lot with her eyes without trying. That's the other key about Lizzie, is that she's effortless in her performance. I never felt like, when we were shooting, that she was trying. If I did, then the scene wasn't working. She's at her best when she's just letting it happen.
As a former athlete, do you feel like you're more in touch with the physicality of your actors or their characters -- say, what their movement or presence brings to a scene?
I don't know. I've never thought about that. But I'm always thinking about -- whenever I'm making a movie or writing a script or hiring a crew -- I'm always thinking about a soccer team. "This is one player; this is what I need. I've got one piece; I need another piece." And I was thinking about a really great game: If you watch a great soccer game --the change, the rhythms, the escalations, the back-and-forth -- it's like watching a good story unfold. I come from that place. And most importantly, the biggest thing I learned from directing was sort of a coach-player mentality. As a player, I had instances where I completely lost my confidence because of ways that coaches dealt with me. There were moments when I was shattered and didn't know how to play -- I was so focused on this lack of confidence. And so I try to approach directing in a way that doesn't do that -- to think about that relationship. What did that coach do to me, and how do I avoid that? How do I make these players confident? That's definitely enters into it.
What's next?
I'm working on a script that I'm writing. I'm trying to figure it out; it's tough to be writing again. We're working on my script, Antonio's starting to develop something, Josh is developing something, and we're in post on Antonio's second feature. We're fully running.
Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter.
Follow Movieline on Twitter.
[Top photo: Getty Images]