Chloë Sevi­gny: ​‘Movies just aren’t as bold as they were in the ​’90s’

Chloë Sevi­gny got her act­ing break in Lar­ry Clark’s huge­ly con­tro­ver­sial and influ­en­tial 1995 film Kids, writ­ten by her then-boyfriend Har­mo­ny Korine. Since then has been a main­stay of both the film and fash­ion worlds, star­ring in the likes of Dogville, Zodi­ac and Love & Friend­ship while also launch­ing sev­er­al cloth­ing lines. She took a break from shoot­ing her new movie recent­ly to dis­cuss step­ping behind the cam­era for the first time for her direc­to­r­i­al debut, Kit­ty.

LWLies: Kit­ty is very dreamy and wist­ful but has real loom­ing sense of melancholy.

Sevi­gny: Yes, the loss and the remorse and the grief. There were a lot of themes that I feel I touched upon that are real­ly like con­stants in my life, hav­ing lost my father and things like that.

You’ve spo­ken out about the dis­tinct lack of women in the film indus­try, was sur­round­ing your­self with female crew a delib­er­ate response to that?

It was a very delib­er­ate choice, espe­cial­ly with the pro­duc­ers. I met a lot of pro­duc­ers who were very daunt­ed by the sto­ry – they thought it was too big or would be too expen­sive because short films have lit­tle to no mon­e­tary gain. I then met two female pro­duc­ers and I knew these were the right peo­ple. My first assis­tant direc­tor [Shead Rowan] is some­one I had worked for a cou­ple of times; the cos­tume design­er [Jen­nifer John­son] I had worked with before. I tried to sur­round myself as much as I could with peo­ple who I knew and loved.

And you had the great Sea­mus McGar­vey as your direc­tor of photography.

Who is not a female, but is very fem­i­nine in his own way. I think he under­stands women more than a lot of men that I know. Sea­mus bridges this kind of beau­ty and spe­cial effects so well in so many movies that he does.

Giv­en that you’ve worked in fash­ion for many years, how much involve­ment did you have on the design side of things?

I love beau­ty and I love mys­tery and I’m a real aes­thet­ic snob I think. So yes, all inten­tion­al and I gave specifics ref­er­ences to every cre­ative department.

How many cats did you look at? That must have been a fun cast­ing call.

We only looked at two sets of cats. This is the thing – there’s actu­al­ly five cats act­ing. We can’t just have one or two cats, it has to be a whole team of cats and kit­tens. Kit­tens are very hard to find and very hard to train so we kin­da only had two options. I’m hap­py we found Rocky, Bull­win­kle, Jack Hand­some, Hero and Jaguar because they were so much more unusual.

With all the ​’90s nos­tal­gia that’s going around, do you find your­self revis­it­ing films like Kids, Gum­mo, The Last Days of Dis­co, etc? How do you feel about that time in your life look­ing back?

You know, I’ve been doing a lit­tle bit of that. The oth­er night I watched Pulp Fic­tion, I hadn’t watched that movie in some­thing like 20 years! Then I watched Do the Right Thing. I don’t know if you can make those kind of movies any­more, peo­ple just aren’t as bold and the world’s gone a lit­tle soft. Those movies were so visu­al, the dia­logue is so bit­ing, they real­ly stand the test of time. I don’t know why peo­ple are so pussy right now.

Some­thing like Lar­ry Clark’s Bul­ly, there’s no way a film com­pa­ny would make some­thing as raw and bru­tal as that today.

I love Bul­ly, I think it’s bet­ter than Kids actu­al­ly. Peo­ple are afraid of hav­ing an edge now, I’m not sure what it is… dis­trib­u­tors get cold feet when any­thing seems too risqué. But that said, I have sev­en movies in the can right now, with Alex Ross Per­ry and Oren Mover­man and Tomas Alfred­son – I’m work­ing on some­thing right now – and they all feel very inde­pen­dent­ly mind­ed. They all have a real point of view and very strong directors.

Kids turned 20 this year and at an anniver­sary, cast and crew reunion screen­ing Lar­ry Clark said he ​“couldn’t find a Jen­ny”, that your char­ac­ter was the hard­est to cast. What’s the sto­ry there?

Orig­i­nal­ly they cast an actress who was the only one with any expe­ri­ence. I was orig­i­nal­ly hired to take her out and show her the town and they start­ed rehears­ing and she start­ed direct­ing the kids. I think Lar­ry was like, ​‘Oh no you didn’t!’ and just thought it wasn’t going to work. She stuck out amongst the oth­er kids, she was more man­nered. She was a child actress I think and so they just let her go which was sad for her. After that I guess Lar­ry turned to Har­mo­ny [Korine] and said, ​‘Who did you have in mind when you were writ­ing this?’ Har­mo­ny and I had already been friends for years and he said, ​‘I guess I was think­ing of Chloë.’ The rest is history.

What are your reflec­tions on The Brown Bun­ny, which is arguably the most con­tro­ver­sial film of your career?

I can’t real­ly speak for why Vin­cent [Gal­lo] hasn’t done any­thing since, although rumours are swirling that he’s mak­ing movies all the time and just not show­ing them to any­one, which seems very in keep­ing with his char­ac­ter. I think the film was hard…it’s a hard film to watch it’s very much a mood piece. I thought it was going to be this very obscure art film, but films tend to have a life of their own you just have to let go of them.

Do you cur­rent­ly have any more plans to direct?

Well, I’ve already shot my sec­ond short. I used the cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Eric Edwards, he shot Kids and My Own Pri­vate Ida­ho. It’s a por­trait of a per­former on the road; a young woman and the iso­la­tion she expe­ri­ences as an artist going through strange towns. It’s a lit­tle bit about explo­ration and objec­ti­fi­ca­tion and want­i­ng to main­tain pri­va­cy, a lot of things that hit home for me the way that Kit­ty did. I’m just try­ing to make as per­son­al and affect­ing a film as I can. I would love to do a fea­ture. I’ve been try­ing to get the rights to dif­fer­ent books. I don’t wan­na just rush into it, it’s got­ta be some­thing that feels close to me, like I have to do it.

Watch Kit­ty at refin​ery29​.com