Spin Me Round writer-director Jeff Baena on falling in love with his actors
Yeah, it’s definitely situational. I came up as a writer, so I value screenplays and I think they’re amazing. I think creatively, it’s really fun to work off of improvisation: you can develop things in the moment that are unexpected, and can deliver performances and even plot elements that, maybe if you had thought about it, you wouldn’t go there. But in the moment, you get there, you commit to it, and that leads to really interesting things. So both ways work.
AVC: But this also felt like the kind of movie where you need different actors who each have their own brand of, can we say awkwardness? How much did you consider tempering these different absurdities, without ever skewing too cartoonish?Yeah, I don’t think you ever want it to go cartoonish. You always want to have some sense of reality. But also, you know, it’s a movie. So it’s fun when it kind of does go off the rails and you get to see people turn it up to 11.