Brit Marling IS Sundance. At least she has been as long as I’ve been coming here. In 2011 I saw both of the films she co-wrote and in which she starred, Another Earth and Sound of My Voice. She returned in 2012 as an actor in Arbitrage, and last year with The East, with her Sound of My Voice collaborator Zal Batmanglij.
This year, Another Earth director Mike Cahill returns to Sundance with I Origins, which he wrote all by himself but in which he still cast Marling. I Origins is about a scientist (Michael Pitt) who is studying ocular biology and may have discovered some of life’s great mysteries within human eyes. Marling plays his lab partner. In The Better Angels, Marling plays Nancy Lincoln, mother of the young Abe in a film by A.J. Edwards, a longtime collaborator of Terrence Malick.
While I have always been a supporter of Marling and her Georgetown filmmaking trio, this was the first time I’ve seen two Brit movies in a single day. Brit happens at Sundance.
CraveOnline: This is actually the first time we’ve talked AT Sundance.
Brit Marling: Is it? That’s crazy.
Was Zal at the premiere of I Origins?
He was, of course, yeah. And he was very moved by the film.
Well, they’ve announced a lot of characters for the new Superman movie, from Batman to Wonder Woman, but they haven’t said anything about Supergirl. We can still make this happen.
Yeah, we should make Supergirl happen. How are we going to do that, Fred?
I keep trying.
You’re putting it out there into the world. I think, Fred, if you put it out into the world it’s bound to happen.
They have a whole extra year now to make it so there’s time.
That’s good, that’s good, that’s good.
I think I missed something when I first started talking to you. Because you wrote the first two films, I approached you as a writer. I gather now that you wrote to give yourself a vehicle to act?
Well, I think that’s how it began. I love writing now as much as I love acting and I don’t think I’d be very satisfied just doing one or just doing the other. I kind of see them as the flip side of the same coin. I hope to continue to do both. I think in the beginning, I thought writing was a means to an end but I kind of fell in love with it along the way.
Isn’t writing great?
I mean, the best. You would know. It’s a lot of fun. It really forces you to do some internal work that I’m not sure you would do otherwise. As an actor you do that work on a character but as a writer you do a lot of that work on yourself. It’s an intense space to go to.
But it worked, right? Because you’re getting roles in other people’s films now.
I feel like I’ve been really fortunate in that the films have come out and I’ve been able to read for things and be cast in things that I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to before. And I love acting in particular in stories that I haven’t been a part of, like Arbitrage or The Company You Keep. It’s amazing to come in and do the work, walk for a while in somebody else’s landscape I guess.
Before your films, were you getting offered lousy parts or going on bad auditions?
I did a lot of that, yeah. Actually, I didn’t do a lot. I did a bit of it and I was like, “This is crazy. I’d rather find some other way to go about this.” I think I went on a couple auditions where there was like lines of girls in miniskirts going in to read for a one line part. I was just like, oh my God, I can’t do this.
What were you dressed like when you went to the miniskirt audition?
Probably in men’s trousers and suspenders, so I wasn’t going to get that part anyway.
It’s funny because I’ve seen you in fashion magazines now and that’s weird to me. It’s not quite how I imagine you, but is that a weird experience?
It is in the sense that it’s a different world, but it’s also a really fun and creative and beautiful world. It has a lot of synergy I think with costume design. I think when you put on clothes, you kind of put on a character or draw a certain part of yourself out. Sometimes you can put on a dress or a certain pair of heels and you feel a bit transformed. That’s fun.
One more personal question. IMDB and Facebook list your full name as Brittany Heyworth Marling. I know Brittany isn’t true because you were named after your Norwegian great grandmother Brit. Is Hayworth true?
Hayworth is true. That is my middle name, but I don’t know about the Brittany. People often think that. They often think it’s short for something, so Fred, I guess we can’t fight them.
Well if people read our interviews they’ll know.
Yeah, if they look back at our interviews they’ll know the truth.
In a way, Another Earth was a movie Mike made for you. Was I Origins more you supporting him?
I think that it’s pretty Even Steven. I think Mike and I are really moved and inspired by similar things. We have a really beautiful, lovely collaborative. Like the last decade of collaboration has been pretty amazing. He’s an incredible director. He has a way of making actors feel very safe and getting them to open up and allow their best work to come out. That has been a true pleasure on both films and I hope that continues for the rest of our lives.
But could you tell this was all Mike, since you didn’t co-write it?
I think it’s really beautiful to watch each other grow and watch each other’s work. I think Mike, Zal and I all feel this, to see each others’ minds and hearts mature and change, and what one wants to create. I think we’ve always been very supportive. When Zal and I were making The East, Mike came and shot stuff for that. I think it’s been a very powerful thing to grow up with a group of friends who are all interested in becoming good storytellers and have been supporting each other along the way every step.
I suppose I should come clean. What I really want is to hang out with you and your smart friends.
Good, do it, Fred! We’ll hang out. It’s a good group of people. Everybody’s really committed to trying to become a better storyteller and to getting better at the things we love to do. That’s not easy. You really have to be vigilant and disciplined.
What did Mike shoot on The East?
He just came when we were doing some of the culture jam videos and Mike helped us with those. It’s a good group of people. We were very lucky to find each other in college.
You would know this, do you think the elevator scene in I Origins was inspired by the time when you were shooting Boxer and Ballerinas in that ravine, when he climbed out and had you jump up to him?
Oh my God. That’s really beautiful. I cannot believe you put that together. Maybe. Maybe. I think it’s hard to separate life from art. I think it all intermingles in there. I think the experiences we have, the ideas we’re wrestling with, we’re trying to make sense of something and that all ends up in the artwork which ends up out in the open and then hopefully people connect with it and they help you answer some of the questions you’re posing for yourself.
Is there really a four-hour cut of I Origins like Mike said at the premiere?
There was a very long rough cut in the beginning. It might have been as long as four hours but I think Mike’s a terrific editor and he really has a way of winnowing things down and figuring out what’s essential for the story and what is not essential. He just keeps whittling it down until he gets to the core. He’s really gifted with that. He has a way of picking up a camera and shooting and cutting that it’s like that relationship with technology is visceral. It’s like how a painter might hold a paintbrush. It’s all very fluid.
