Written by:
Diane Anderson-Minshall
» Order
this Issue of Curve:
Vol. 15#1
Deborah Kampmeier’s profound and psychologically penetrating indie feature film Virgin tells the story of Jessie (The West Wing’s Elisabeth Moss), a troubled teen who wakes from a drug and alcohol binge with no memory of how she got into the woods or what happened the evening before. When she discovers she’s pregnant, Jessie becomes convinced she’s carrying the next Christ child, garnering violent opposition from her family and the conservative Baptist community that has long trapped her. The breathtaking Virgin was Kampmeier’s first feature and her enthusiasm for the project attracted A-list talent (including actress Robin Wright Penn, who later signed on as an executive producer), numerous award nominations (including two coveted Independent Spirit nods) and hoards of female viewers (who flooded sold-out showings at theaters around the country). What Virgin didn’t attract was a distributor, so Kampmeier and her Full Moon Pictures co-founder Raye Dowell took on the daunting task of distributing the film themselves.
Kampmeier, who began her career as an actress at the National Shakespeare Conservatory, has worked in the New York theatre scene for almost two decades. The writer-director-executive producer filmed Virgin with a budget of only $65,000 in 21 days (one-eighth of which was spent on birds!), and (as proof of the company’s family-first policy) her young daughter Sophia toddled around the set at all times.
How important was it to have a star like Robin Wright Penn attached to Virgin?
It was an incredible gift Robin gave me by attaching herself to this project. She made the film possible on so many levels. She gave it legitimacy that made it possible to raise the $65,000 budget in 5 weeks. Having her name attached when we sent the script out to agents drew a high caliber of actors to the project. A talented crew worked for free because of her involvement. Festivals screened the film. Audiences came out to see it. But the greatest gift Robin gave was her exquisite talent, manifesting in a stunning performance. And her colleagueship, which is full of integrity, honesty and generosity, buoys me up. I am very grateful to her.
Virgin is one of a couple of recent teen films to take a provocative stance on religion and pregnancy. Did you hear criticism for the theme?
You have to take the emotional ride of the film if you are going to “get it.” Most of the criticism came, it seems to me, from people who stayed outside of the film, for whatever reason, watching from a more intellectual position. They just didn’t get it. It’s not really a religious film, though it is a spiritual film, which puts some people off. And it’s a film of the heart. Which is a hard ride for many. And the film is not about teen pregnancy; the pregnancy becomes a metaphor for the preciousness inside all of us. For me, the film is about many things, but one of the most important things it’s about is the power of the imagination and how what we believe changes our perspective and perception of the world inside and outside of us. Once Jessie believes there is something special inside her, she has the eyes to see what’s always been there for her to see and the ears to hear what’s been there to be heard. … She’s also a very courageous character who takes what could be a paralyzing trauma and turns it into a powerful myth for herself. It is her choice, and she chooses a path of self-respect rather than one of self-destruction.
You had to self-distribute the film. What’s that been like?
Hard.
Do you still think there’s a gap between the audience and distributors?
I think there is an enormous gap between the audience and the distributors. I have been told time and time again that women are not a demographic, or at least not a demographic you can market to. However, at all of the screenings of Virgin, I have been approached by women in large numbers expressing their gratitude for the film. It’s not an easy film. But women are emotionally strong — it doesn’t have to be easy. I think women appreciate the opportunity to sit with a film, as painful as it may be, that reflects their secret and silent stories. It makes us feel connected, less alone in the world. When distributors finally realize that women are in fact hungry for the truth of their experience rather than a simple superficial fantasy that requires we cut off huge chunks of ourselves in order to see it as a mirror and identify with it, they will see there is an opportunity to make money and will begin to support our true voices. Or at least I hope so.
Why and how did you spend one-eighth of your budget on trained birds?
My poor producer said to me early in preproduction — which was only three weeks long to begin with — that we would, of course, have to get rid of the birds. I think I was sobbing when I said I had to have the birds. I really felt that way. I knew that I was trying to capture the uncapturable, to represent the unrepresentable. And I didn’t want to do it with special effects in postproduction. I wanted it to feel very real. I also didn’t want it to be some kind of pretty-rainbow-all-is-nice relationship to the divine. At least my relationship with my spiritual life is more complicated than that. And I felt the birds captured that complexity. I felt they captured not just the awesome and beautiful nature of the divine but also the wild and chaotic and frightening aspects, as well. So I was determined to have them. My producer proceeded to send the script out to every animal trainer in the country and there was one company run by two women, who loved the script. It so happened there was a shipment of birds coming out to the East Coast from L.A. for another project, and they put 20 extra birds on the plane for free and flew them out for free and the trainers worked for two weeks at half their rate. They were amazing. No one got paid on this film, but the birds got one-eighth of the budget.
How hard is it to photograph 40 naked people in the Hudson River?
Well, this is a funny story. We had gotten enormous support and cooperation from the town where we shot most of the film, especially from the police department. And when we told them we would be shooting a scene with 40 people in the Hudson River – which, by the way, would have been 4,000 people if I’d had a bigger budget – they agreed to look the other way. But we didn’t mention we would be naked in the Hudson River. So when our group of nudists (responding to an ad in Nude and Natural magazine) whipped off all their clothes and led our not-so-uninhibited cast and crew into the water naked, we were suddenly swarmed by cop cars. Fortunately for us, one of the courageous naked cast members, who had played an extra role as a cop in the film, was on the police force in that town. So as we were all about to be arrested and hauled off to the jail cell Jessie occupies in the film, one of the cops on the shore recognized one of his own in the water and decided not to make the arrest.
How much of the film is autobiographical?
This is a hard question to answer. My secrets are my fuel. And I must protect my psyche so that it feels safe to tell the truth the next time around. It’s a cliché, I know, but one that I think is true: Every autobiography is fiction, and every fiction is autobiographical. Sometimes there is a thick mask of fiction over the truth, sometimes a thin veil and sometimes it’s wide open. I move between these three positions in my writing a lot. One of the pieces of autobiographical information I’ve chosen to share is that when I was a child, 8 or 9 years old, I was haunted by this terror that God was going to come to me and tell me I had to carry the next Christ child. I was obsessed, really terrorized by this idea. And it was the memory of this terror that became the core of the plotline. And then around that plotline I could wrestle with other demons and interests and ideas I was exploring at the time.
|
