BACKSTAGE DRAMA
The story behind the ambitious punk rock drama starring Elisabeth Moss…
Five films at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival were about female singer-songwriters. The last one to make it to the UK – after A Star Is Born, Wild Rose, Vox Lux and Teen Spirit – is arguably the best. Alex Ross Perry’s Her Smell is a harrowing and extreme viewing experience that’s worth sticking with.
“There is a point in this movie that I believe sweet relief arrives,” explains writer/director Perry (Listen Up Philip, Queen Of Earth), when Teasers meets him at TIFF. “If you’re impatient, you don’t get it, and you leave with an incomplete experience.” Inspired by theatre, and Aaron Sorkin’s Steve Jobs script (“I love that movie that no one remembers or cares about”), the film follows punk star Becky Something (frequent Perry collaborator Elisabeth Moss) in meltdown backstage, in the recording studio, and beyond.
Her Smell has a distinct five-act structure, but it’s an initially gruelling watch, with Moss portraying Becky’s collapse in vivid detail, while the
discordant sound design and closequarters cinematography magnify the experience. It was almost as intense off screen. “I can’t speak to whether or not it’s hard for [Moss] to live in that headspace, but she says in interviews that it was,” Perry says of his leading lady. “But it’s hard, because we were doing 14-page days, and we were doing all 14 pages at a time, like 10 times in a row. Each act we shot in three days.”
Perry wrote the film specifically for Moss. “I became fascinated with the idea of Lizzie playing [a punk rock singer],” he says. “It was less like writing a script for an actor to try to wrap their head around – I really felt like I was just writing the closed captioning for her performance. I was just writing the exact performance for her line readings, for her physicality
– just everything.”
The remainder of Something She are played by Agyness Deyn and Gayle Rankin, while Cara Delevingne, Ashley Benson and Dylan Gelula form rival band Akergirls. Brit star Dan Stevens plays Becky’s ex-husband. “I believe strongly that there are next to no good male actors working today,” says Perry, typically not mincing his words. Stevens, however, had the required range to play a reformed party animal, and his stage experience was helpful, given the structure.
The film’s punk music (created by Alicia Bognanno of Bully) makes it something of an outlier in the current crop. “This is not a commentary on the creative process of those other movies, but it’s easier to make a movie about pop than it is to make a movie about punk,” asserts Perry. “There’s definitely a trend, but I’d be a lot more interested in it if it was three punk movies, which there never will be.”
ETA | 9 September / Her Smell Is Available On Digital Hd This Autumn.