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Q & A with Anna Biller

Q: So why did you decide to make VIVA?

A: I wanted to do a realistic story about a woman who's a scapegoat of the sexual revolution, who endures everything in the name of being liberated. She's just going with the flow, and it's such a dangerous and demonic world of predators out there, and she's completely unprotected. I thought it was very funny and also a very real kind of story.

Q: You say you wanted to make a realistic film, but your film is very stylized.

A: It's true, it's very stylized visually, but very realistic psychologically. I care a lot about story, but I like to tell the story more through images, and not so much words. A lot of the scenarios in VIVA are taken from my own experience, and from stories I've heard from other women about their experiences with men. I noticed that a lot of the 60's exploitation films were about women undergoing sexual trials, and although they were created for the prurient viewing pleasure of men, they are stories about women and what women go through. So the genre really interested me because of that.

Q: What was your strategy in creating a look for VIVA?

A: I looked through a bunch of decorating books and magazines, some vintage Playboy magazines, and some late 60's films, and the visual world was just so rich and so consistent and so effective. The time was so much about color, and the film uses color in a very strong way.

Q: What were your greatest sources of inspiration while making VIVA?

A: The vintage Playboys were a strong reference. I would tear out pages and stare at them, and just absorb the atmosphere in them and daydream and then write scenes based on what I imagined was going on in the different ads and cartoons. I found that I had a very strong reaction when I started going through the Playboys. Revulsion, but also fascination. That material is very lurid, and also very visual. And certain films were very important too, mostly Suburban Roulette, The Alley Cats, Camille 2000, Frenzy, Belle de Jour, and Cool it Carol. They really set the tone for the film.

Q: How did you get such an incredible look for your film with your budget?

A: I spent a lot of time. Months and months making costumes, collecting objects from the Salvation Army, doing little pieces of macramé. I made the film much like a gallery artist makes work, and each new set was like building a new installation. We had 34 sets and I wore 34 costumes in the film, plus we had about 150 actors, which should give you a sense of why I call it an epic, but it was all possible because of spending a couple of years doing one scene at a time, on weekends spread far apart.

Q: You have a lot of nudity in the film, and you yourself do some nude scenes. Was that a hard decision to make?

A: Absolutely! But to not do it would really have been being unauthentic and disappointing my audience, because I was doing the sexploitation genre. I've always been terrified of nudity, so in a way I was facing my own worst fears. But it gives the film a super-charge, to have the director taking those kinds of risks. And it's part of what makes the film so unique.

Q: So, what's next?

A: I'm thinking of jumping back a decade or so to the early 1960's and doing a film that takes place at a cheap carnival, with the main characters as burlesque dancers, possibly in Britain. The main inspirations for it so far have been the Joan Crawford movie Berserk, the movie Nightmare Alley, and pulp novels from the 50's and 60's.