Writer, Star and Director of retro 70s sexploitation flick Anna Biller has joined Movie Vortex to talk about the series side of her film, the nature of female sexuality and why her characters talk like an advert...

MV: How did the initial idea for the film come about?

AB – I’ve always been interested in doing films about female desires, I thought it would be interesting to do a sexy women about what women want, female fantasies.  I did a lot of things that were not politically correct in the film but honest.

MV: How long from the inception to completion did the film take?

AB - At least 3 years maybe 4, it was much longer than I expected but I think we moved pretty fast considering as I was one year editing on a flat bed, 10 hours a day, without ever taking a day off and it still took a year.  It was very time consuming doing this way but it was a fetish thing for me to shoot on film and edit on film and it changes the way you cut it as you tend to make longer cuts and you tend to examine the cuts more carefully.

MV: What was the most important aspect of the film – music, costumes and setting, attention to detail, script or performance?

AB – I think a true work of art is what it is in the final product rather than the elements that you can take apart from it, what idea you begin with the most important but then what it becomes after its been realized is really what’s really important and what effect it produces as a whole.  It would be difficult to understand the film unless you realize that is taking you into a different time and environment, and I’m trying to give you the mindset of that world and not looking at it from a nowadays point of view which people cant help but doing anyway.

MV: What do you want people to take from the film?

AB – I want them to be able to think about women in a different way and that women are women and are not just a brain in space and that they have a body and are part of life; their sexuality is part of life and is not dirty.  I’m trying to talk about the sexual revolution and have people think and talk about that and how it made us believe in what we are today for good and for bad, and also want to bring back some of the fun from that time and a little bit of the hardness and shockiness of those films from then.

MV: Barbi/Viva gets into all kinds of mischief yet you make no moral judgment of her even though she is drugged and raped in two scenes.  Why is this and what message does it send out?

AB – Well actually theses scenes are really tricky as in a regular movie you would read those scenes that she was being drugged and raped but in this movie I was trying to talk about the ambivalence of female sexuality unlike a man who sexuality is simple. A women is also in the position of not really knowing if she wants something or not and she puts herself into difficult situations almost asking to be led towards this kind of danger and wanting to be led there but not in the way she wants.  She makes herself passive on purpose and is giving the men control but it’s not what she is really looking for.  She wants love and passion and that’s not what they are giving her.  Absolutely no moral judgment was made and at the close of the film you have the characters in this dingy theatre, with this horrible man who has taken advantage of them in the past, there is no audience and what are they doing there anyway?

MV: Did you shoot on digital or film as the colour palette looks great?

AB - We shot on film and the colour was got by a lot of it being art direction believe it or not and a lot of it was just lighting, hard lighting lots of it on set.  It still looks lit well even in the digital photos taken on set. I have more of a visual sense as I come from making film images as I studied art.

MV: Was it intentional to have certain characters talk just like they were in a TV Advert?

AB - Yes, absolutely Mark’s character is an actor it’s his job so he’s trained to talk that way, but the other people I think are slightly more theatrical in their presentation of things and you can see that in old newsreels.  That was a kind of presentation from then that was not too far from reality as people then like to present themselves as characters in life because that was the social thing to do.  I also took most of the visuals from actual magazines like Playboy and decorating too which had all these ads for food and liquor, so I tried to incorporate that into the film and that these magazines were trying to create a whole world of pleasure and an entire lifestyle.

MV: Do you condone or condemn Barbi/Viva’s behaviour as she is not really in control but the neighbour Sheila does seem to be when she says ‘She never slept with any men’ when she was a prostitute too?

AB – The big joke at the end of the film is that Barbi thought that’s what everybody did and it turns out here’s the pie in the face only you did that.  It’s a joke about her naiveté so its kind of like how that world of sexual predators during the sexual revolution was different for different people and I’m just trying to show the levels so that a woman who is really strong and in control does not get hurt by it she just has some fun but a woman who is very very naïve and very trusting and maybe a bit masochistic will kind of get hurt by it.  Kind of like a child, Barbi was a bit childlike as you would not put a child into a bunch of wolves.  Even though she was a fully grown woman its like a coming of age story sexually for her really.

MV: How do you get your ideas from life, friends or dreams?

(Laughs) Yes, exactly from there! And from movies and from books and culture in general.

MV: Any plans to work in mainstream Hollywood and what is next for you?

I’m not against working in mainstream Hollywood; I can work with good scripts and actors. The main thing is having creative control and it would have to be a question of who I was working with in terms of that control but who knows how mercenary we are in life!  I plan to make another feature film and I’m juggling different budgets maybe getting some stars in and get bigger funding or else just doing it really low budget again.

Want more? Read our thoughts on Viva HERE.

Interview by Mark Cappuccio