THE MAKING OF ‘SECOND PERSON’

After living in New York City for five years, I was ready to move back to California. New York was exhausting, but also rich with characters, stories and a grittiness that California lacked. I wanted to try to capture that somehow before I left, so I decided to make a film, even though I had no idea how to do that.

I bought a camera, rented a good microphone, and over three weekends I filmed myself and three friends (a songwriter, a dancer, and a waitress) improvising scenes in my Little Italy apartment based on an outline I wrote.

When I tried to edit the footage using a VHS deck, I was frustrated by the limitations of the equipment, so I set it aside. 28 years later, with the help of vastly improved technology and an experienced editor, I finished it.

'Second Person' has since screened in New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo. 

FILM DESCRIPTION

Lola returns after a two year unexplained disappearance. When she arrives on Nicolas' doorstep he lets her in, although he's not sure why. And so their low romance resumes just where it ended. The apartment is exactly the same as when she left - same pictures, same furniture, Nicolas is wearing the same T-shirt. Time has stood still, or at least it seems to in Nicolas' "small world".

Improbably enough, though, Nicolas has written and published a book in Lola's absence. She imagines it to be about their relationship, all that has gone unsaid. Now Nicolas' inapproachability is endowed with a mystery that compels Lola to him. Nicolas allows her to stay because he can't think of a reason not to.

Working without a script, the actors grope for words, their conversations punctuated by awkward silences and natural humor. The camera remains static, with the characters moving in and out of the picture frame, creating separate rooms of each scene, a collage of the whole. The viewer becomes a fly on the wall, a voyeur.

‘Second Person’ purposefully breaks all the rules of high drama in order to probe the other side of romance, that which simply persists. By using the absurd it gets at something which feels uncomfortably true, even familiar.