Sundance '07: Short Shot -- King
Appeared in Sundance Daily Insider, 2007King director Caran Hartsfield has a love-hate relationship with her chosen career. “I don’t like writing, I don’t like production, I don’t like being on set,” she said laughing. “Writing and directing is so much pressure and headache and stress and you don’t sleep. So in that sense I don’t enjoy it.
“Yet I do love filmmaking – it’s the freakiest thing. When you love something, you just want to be a part of it. There are so many times when I’m either watching a film or just playing in the editing room and I think, ‘I love this! I love film!’ It’s just magical.”
Her passion for film began when she was a young girl. “My mother and I used to go to see foreign films together and I always loved that. And in my freshman year in college Spike Lee came to speak and for some reason that just clicked for me.”
King is Hartsfield’s third short film and her first to screen at the Festival, yet she is no stranger to the Sundance world. In 2003, Hartsfield attended the Writer’s Lab to develop her first feature script – Bury Me Standing – which is being produced by Gina Kwan (Me, You and Everyone We Know) and Effie Brown (In the Cut and this year’s Rocket Science). Hartfield’s script is also a finalist for the Sundance/NHK International Filmmaker’s Award, the winner of which will be announced tomorrow. The film is slated for production this spring.
The NYU masters film program grad has been developing the feature script for several years now, but in the meantime felt the urge to get back behind the camera. “Several of my friends from film school and I were sitting around complaining about how long it’s been since we’ve been on set and how rusty we were,” she said. “We all needed to jump back in the game, so one day we said, okay, let’s make a feature together.”
Each friend took a segment and King, which is screening as a short in the Festival, is Hartsfield’s 15-minute contribution. The group decided on the theme of sex and devised a list of logistical rules (i.e. no more than four actors) and aesthetic guidelines (i.e. at least one scene of complete improvisation) that had to be followed. Hartsfield’s story centers on Isabelle, a middle-aged, single woman who hires a male prostitute to satisfy her needs. “I guess I was just interested in the idea of sexuality once you get into the third act of your life,” she commented. “It seems like it’s never addressed or talked about and I doubt it just disappears. I was curious to explore that. What happens if you’re not married and you still have natural human desires and urges?”
Which makes for an entertaining, if slightly awkward scenario. “It’s hard to think about your grandmother having sex – it just freaks you out. It’s more than the brain can contend with ¬– especially Americans who already have a thing about sexuality. So couple that with age – it’s just too much for us,” the director said. “I like films that don’t just tell a story, but you come away feeling like you had an experience.”