Parker Posey: Almost a Vegetarian

Parker Posey was coronated "Queen of the Indies" not long before the title was similarly bestowed (or was it burdened?) on Chloe Sevigny and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Each "Queen" has had the common graciousness to have left her projects richer for her nuanced efforts, and Parker Posey's sixty-plus feature film credits in fifteen years lie testament to not only her talent but the choices with which she's challenged the movie-watcher with originality, perspicacity and moxie (together with a trait that I'll shyly admit is accessible sex appeal).

Born with the initials PCP, it seems fitting that Posey's persona proffers a scorching sense of humor, evidenced by her work with Christopher Guest and team, and also by the pieces of the puzzle by which Parker reveals her characters: an ill-fitting shoe, an elaborate hairstyle, a Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis suit or orthodontal braces. With Hal Hartley's Fay Grim set for its HDNet "Day and Date Release," Zoe Cassavetes's Broken English and Spring Breakdown, a comedy pairing Parker with fellow thirty-somethings Amy Poehler and Rachel Dratch (who find themselves stuck in the middle of the Spring Break scene) all set for release, we caught up with Parker Posey in New York.

Moving Pictures Magazine: Despite being raised in the South, you seem like the quintessential New Yorker. Do you have a place in L.A. as well?Parker Posey: I spend time there working, but I've never lived-lived there. I'm kind of like, "Where is everybody?" There aren't enough people on the street, you know? And the driving - out in L.A. you're driving around and you're like, "Wow, I could be in Vermont by now if I was in New York."

MPM: Speaking of New York - you were on the Tribeca Film Festival jury a couple of years ago...
Posey: Yeah, that is such an amazing festival. They've gotta get people to see the documentaries there because these documentaries are so amazing and you get the impression that you won't see them other than at the festival. Why isn't there a documentary film channel to show all these powerful documentaries being made? There are all these amazing students and young people who want to expose things. I saw all these movies when I was on the jury and I never heard from them again and I don't remember when they came out, if they came out.

MPM: Do you think YouTube and movie downloads give visibility to those indie films that don't otherwise get seen theatrically?
Posey: The last YouTube that I saw was the original Dreamgirl - Jennifer Holiday. I checked that out 'cause I was curious to see the difference in performances. I don't know. It seems [YouTube] has people doing things like making films of things that they already saw on television and putting them on the computer for other people to watch. That's how our culture is. That's a whole 'nother conversation. It's like Andy Warhol was right - what are we gonna do?

Doesn't the Internet all seem so critical? Everyone's a critic and saying what they believe in and what their opinions are, and it's all just rumor at a certain point. It's like passing notes in class. I don't think it's grounded. I don't think it has relationship to what's real.

MPM: You had two films at Sundance this year. How different is the Park City festival from Tribeca?
Posey: Prior to this year, the last time I was [at Sundance] was with Personal Velocity, and that was six years ago. And it's gotten so big and corporate.

I ran into [Sundance Film Festival director] Geoff [Gilmore] at a party for the Sundance Channel - And I didn't know if Broken English had gotten in or not, and he was unable to tell me. And I said, "You have to let this movie in. Sundance doesn't accept movies like this anymore, and on the premise of that you should let it in." Independent film isn't the same as what it was; it's been co-opted by the studio system so it's just not as pure. I think it's great that movies can still be small.

MPM: Did it feel like you're part of a legacy, working with Zoe Cassavetes on Broken English?
Posey: I see what you mean - looking from the outside. She's very much a director, and she's constantly creative, so in that way I think she's got the blood; I think she's a natural. But my experience working on movies is never from the outside.

I read the script three years ago and loved it. Zoe's just so honest and funny and truthful in a very energetic way. She was always talking about the character, talking about the situations and why she liked a particular scene (and laughing by the monitors).

This movie - it's not the movies of the '70s like her dad, but it's got a sly undercurrent of pain and loneliness. It's really tragic; everyone goes through feelings of being unlovable, and that's the sad truth. So in that way she's tapped into something.

MPM: Is it a different experience working with a female director?
Posey: Yeah. I love it. As an actor, I want to always feel like the extension of my director's imagination - what they thought of the part - and just be a living, breathing kind of thing that they can play with. It's very freeing working with a woman and having that be an extension of the woman's idea or truth. 'Cause a man couldn't - they know women in a different kind of way. [Fay Grim director] Hal Hartley knows and feels about women very differently from Zoe.

And to be able to have women, girls, come up and say, "Gosh, I really related to that," is a great compliment. That's kind of - that's what you do it for, you know? A lot of movies have women in these so-called "power" positions or women on the make to find someone. And I don't really see a lot of that and I don't hear a lot of that from my own friends. It's more like people fall in love and they figure it out as they go along.

MPM: John C. Reilly told us that when he gets a character, he starts with the shoes - it determines the way he moves...
Posey: Totally, the shoes and the hair. [Broken English's Nora] can't walk in any of her shoes - they're all falling down at the ankles and she's sliding around, and they all cost over $300. The Marc Jacobs shoes looked like they were from the '70s and reminded me of my grandmother - gold lamé with the strap on the back - but she can't walk in them. She can barely walk down the street.

On Personal Velocity with Rebecca [Miller], too, I picked out the shoes and we just started laughing, like, "That's it, that's it, those are it." Certain kind of heel, certain toe.

MPM: In Fay Grim, who came up with the wardrobe for when you enter Henry Fool's world of espionage?
Posey: Oh, that was Hal. As Fay is moving in to find Henry, he wanted me in this stuff [that was] kind of "super-hero." He wanted a dress that was a coat as well, something really dramatic. We found that coat in a costume shop, and leggings and stilettos. I don't know where he comes up with this stuff, but he does.

I love Hal. Actors love him and love working with him. He's such an original director and writer. He's smart and he's just such an artist. I'd do anything for him. He could call me and be, like, "Come do a theater piece in Berlin." I'd be there. He can paint, he can write, he plays his own music (and produces his own music for his movies) - he's got full rounded talent.

MPM: What other creative talents can you boast of?
Posey: My dog, Gracie. (Laughs) And I do pottery.

MPM: You do?
Posey: I got into pottery, I guess, around the Personal Velocity time - like six, seven years ago. And there was a pottery studio around the corner from where I lived in Chelsea and I always walked by there. I think it was the year before 9-11, and I just started going there. And I like the teacher/student relationship. I got more out of being around someone who knew what they were doing and knew their craft and the talk of craft and what it is to teach a technique.

And pottery is just a really beautiful language. If you were to study in Japan, you'd spend years and years just throwing a piece of clay into the center of the wheel. It was taking the clay and moving it, making it into a ball and just the dedication I really liked about it... the headspace of being in your own kind of flow. Once you know how to do it, you get lost in it and it's a meditation and it's really amazing. Now I do more yoga; I'm more into my balancing that way. But pottery's got a yoga thing to it as well. There's like a center point, and a letting go and a focusing at the same time, and a process. You're throwing things away and you're keeping what's good; it's kind of moody. Just kind of a dialogue, I guess.

MPM: I've got to ask - what's the most fun thing about being part of the Christopher Guest mockumentaries?
Posey: He's so wise and kind and funny, and those movies are like no other acting that you do. You get cast and you immediately start to meditate on who this person is, what you can expose of this kind of person.

There are so many confines when you work within the Hollywood system now, and everyone has a decision on what you wear and how you look. Sometimes you have to wear a designer thing and you don't have freedom, so it takes you further and further away from your own thing that you're working on. But when you do Chris's movies, it gives you so much freedom that by the time you get to the set, everything's kind of happening, and then the camera's on and you just - you start acting. And it's crazy because you're in the moment and everything that you've been thinking about just comes out.

We were doing Waiting for Guffman in Austin, Texas and we would order Chinese food and watch the dailies; and I couldn't believe how funny it was. It was, like, "What? - How is that so funny?"

[Here Posey barks] Yeah, Gracie, you tryin' to say something? Want to say hi? No? Want to say hi?

MPM: Hey Gracie, how would you describe your mom? What words would you use, if you could?
Posey: She'd say that I was nice and loving and devoted to her.

MPM: Did you have her before you did Best in Show?
Posey: No. I ordered her from heaven. (Laughs)

MPM: Is heaven in upstate New York?
Posey: (Laughs) I fell in love with Gracie at the pet store. She's a Bichon-Poodle-Maltese. She's a Poodle mix.

MPM: As this is our art issue - what was the Basquiat experience like?
Posey: I played [gallery owner] Mary Boone, so I got to hang out with Mary and, remember, we went to The Odeon. I worked four or five days, and it was just kind of going into the art world. I didn't know [Basquiat director] Julian Schnabel; I knew David Salle. I'd posed for paintings of his with Karole Armitage.

But I'm trying to make a film and David Bowie's sitting in a chair getting made up as Andy Warhol... you can't really begin to - you gotta - it's gotta be all right, you know? And Jeffrey Wright was just always in character. It's such a great timepiece, that movie.

MPM: You were in The Anniversary Party, one of the first independent theatrical releases to be shot using digital cameras. Has that become the norm?
Posey: [Fay Grim and Broken English] were totally different looks but they were both digital. I like working in digital... The camera is smaller, so it feels less like it's in the room. When we were doing Personal Velocity, Ellen [Kuras] shot with two cameras, and she was just holding them with her hand. They're really light, and I think there's a different pace that you can get with a digital camera that is more emotional because the person shooting can be freer with their rhythm. I think what was so effective in Personal Velocity is how it's shot, it's so intimate. People were saying that it feels like you're sneaking into someone's life and kinda watching them.

Posey: Did you read [David Lynch's] Catching the Big Fish?
MPM: No; one of our writers reviewed it though. Have you read it?
Posey: Mm hmm. It's amazing to see his instincts at work and what makes him so incredible. He has a process that's so unique. It's great what digital did in Inland Empire. Who knows what digital can do to some creative brain out there trying to tap into their own creativity.

MPM: Do you see everything Lynch comes out with?
Posey: Mm hmm.

MPM: Are there others whose work you can't miss?
Posey: ...Michel Gondry, Charlie Kaufman. I mean that kind of poetry, right? I feel like if you work at a certain level like that, then you can really move people in ways that they don't understand. I think those guys do that.

MPM: I asked Geoffrey Rush where he weighs in on the debate as to whether the actors should publicly participate in politics and he noted that the good plays and the good movies should do that for you.
Posey: Oh, that's so true isn't it? Just think of all the political movies this year. I loved Children of Men.

MPM: When you take on a project, do you look to do stuff with any particular message?
Posey: I'm not at that level. (Laughs) I mean, I guess you really want to think of me as being some indie queen, but I don't sit somewhere and think, "I'd love to get my hands on some amazing political drama." Roles are written by writers and directed by directors and made by studios or financers... Do I want good parts to come along? Yeah.

MPM: I guess those interviewers have difficulty believing that those people don't come to you automatically. I know you're saying it doesn't happen, but it just seems like it should.
Posey: That's really sweet of you. It doesn't. My movies haven't made money. I'm in leads in films and I've carried movies, but you put them on a sheet of paper and those movies didn't make a lot of money even though people liked them.

It's great. I'm not complaining at all, but the perception is always surprising to me. I don't mind it, but it surprises me. [At one stage], I was on covers of magazines and putting pennies in coin rolls and then being, like, "Can I borrow money to pay my therapist, dad?" (Laughs)

I do these low budget movies, and I am truly grateful to have an opportunity to play a human being; and then you go into other parts in bigger movies, and you facilitate the story and you get a paycheck.

MPM: Are there any particular causes that you do support?
Posey: I'm part of the "be nice to other people" charity. I'm having my assistant call all the airlines because I don't want anyone to ever fly coach again. Everyone's going to be able to sit comfortably... and, hopefully, eat a nice vegetarian meal.

MPM: Are you vegetarian?
Posey: I'm trying to be. Wait a second, I just passed out. (Laughs) When I was in New Mexico [filming The Eye with Jessica Alba and Alessandro Nivola], I got into all this ayurvedic stuff. I went to The Ayurvedic Institute and I do a lot of yoga. And I started kinda doing stuff with my diet. For someone like me who's small or who burns through things quickly, grasps things quickly, but forgets just as quickly, eating chocolate covered espresso beans is not going to make that part of me balanced. So I'm not drinking coffee anymore and I shouldn't be eating chocolate, but I'm having a hard time with that, I'm afraid. I'm eating a lot of fish.

So let's see what happens when I give up coffee. Now that people have filmed themselves and put it on YouTube, now everyone's gonna try to figure out how to eat each other? (Laughs) Are you a vegetarian if you eat your own flesh?

MPM: I'd have to say no. There's no way. You'd be... you'd be a humanitarian. (Laughs) Don't you think? What's Gracie's opinion on it?
Posey: A humanitarian... she gives love bites. She pretends to bite you but doesn't. She is really so funny. She's now a therapy dog. She's gonna go visit old people and stuff. She just got her license. She went to the Psychoanalytic Institute up on the Upper West Side, and you should see her right now - she's got these horned-rim glasses.

MPM: And a pipe?
Posey: And I'm lying down on the couch. She's just smiling at me.

MPM: Was it fun working with "Saturday Night Live"-ers Amy Poehler and Rachel Dratch on Spring Breakdown?
Posey: They're hilarious. They're very funny. I was working so hard then. I did that right after working on Broken English and Fay Grim. So that was last year. I took a big break this fall and winter.

MPM: When you take a break, do you stay in New York and hang out?
Posey: Yes; I go to Trader Joe's. I try to be a normal New York person. It's the place to be. You have to go there with someone else so they can help you shop. It's really cool. I love it. And it's such a bargain that everyone's just going crazy.

MPM: Is anyone else in your family in entertainment?
Posey: Yeah, they all are.

MPM: (Laughs) Are you lying to me?
Posey: Every single one of them is in entertainment, yeah. You bet. Academy Awards. They're very funny. (Laughs) Okay, I'm gonna go take my bath. -MPM

Photos taken at The Gershwin Hotel in NYC; Hair by Kevin Woon; Makeup by Matin; Stylist: Nalla Ruechel; Photographer's Assistant: Joey Wehner