Shan­non Mur­phy: ​‘At film school they made me believe I couldn’t be an auteur’

Aus­tralian direc­tor Shan­non Mur­phy has spent decades hon­ing her craft in the­atre and tele­vi­sion, but has final­ly made the leap to fea­ture film­mak­ing. Her debut, Baby­teeth, which pre­miered in a pres­ti­gious com­pe­ti­tion slot at the 2019 Venice Film Fes­ti­val, is adapt­ed from a play by Rita Kalne­jais about the flighty teenage romance between Mil­la (Eliza Scanlen) and Moses (Toby Wal­lace) that comes with rather a lot of added emo­tion­al bag­gage, includ­ing the former’s ter­mi­nal ill­ness. The film, how­ev­er, isn’t maudlin – it’s a breezy and iron­ic look at when life’s extreme highs and lows all occur in very quick succession.

LWLies: In inter­views with writer/​playwright Rita Kalne­jais she describes Baby­teeth as a sto­ry about how love undoes you and makes you hon­est. How did that idea res­onate with you when mak­ing the film?

Mur­phy: What’s won­der­ful about that descrip­tion is it strips the idea of when Mil­la is back right at bare bones, try­ing to recon­nect to who she wants to be in this last chap­ter of her life. And I do think that she is able to be more brave when it comes to love and take more risks as a result of her sit­u­a­tion. Moses is so elec­tric and gets her to start oper­at­ing on anoth­er fre­quen­cy in a way that wouldn’t have hap­pened oth­er­wise. I believe in that state­ment and I think that’s what’s so won­der­ful about work­ing with Rita – we have sim­i­lar ideas of life and love and how to live and humour and of what it means to be a con­tem­po­rary Aus­tralian sto­ry­teller, and also that both of our back­grounds began in theatre.

From my under­stand­ing, Rita had writ­ten the play which was being per­formed quite some time back. Did you ever see the play?

It’s fun­ny because I actu­al­ly start­ed my the­atre direct­ing career at the the­atre com­pa­ny where the play was on, but I missed that show. So by the time the script came to me it was sev­en years after the play and I didn’t want to read the play and I didn’t want to watch the archival video because I didn’t want to be influ­enced by it. But once I fin­ished all my pre-pro­duc­tion I did go back and read the play and what I loved about it were the title chap­ters. I just felt that they helped you move through time in a more inter­est­ing way and allowed it to play on mem­o­ry but also the sense of not hav­ing to be pre­scrip­tive about what day it was, where she is in her jour­ney, like find­ing it quite frus­trat­ing but the point is you have to move through. Also, to start off with some­thing quite prac­ti­cal and then become famil­iar with her thoughts and then become poet­ic as her jour­ney becomes more spiritual.

How do you know as a direc­tor when a screen­play is the right fit for you and your sensibility?

I read so many scripts that I know that it’s like­ly, because I’m not a writer, it has to have my voice with­out me hav­ing writ­ten a sin­gle word of it, so it’s a tricky fit. But I know imme­di­ate­ly, because I can’t stop talk­ing about it. I start say­ing out­ra­geous things like, ​‘I’m the only per­son who can direct this and this is my film’, and it’s like I devel­op a sick­ness. I can’t stop think­ing about it. And I just then know that my next job is to try and con­vince who­ev­er sent it to me that it’s the cor­rect match. And it doesn’t hap­pen a lot. I’ve been read­ing things non-stop since Baby­teeth and it’s been real­ly hard to find any­thing. So I think with film if you don’t like it, it’s only once every few years that you get some­thing that you real­ly like.

That’s an unex­pect­ed­ly low hit rate.

Yeah. But then that’s also when you might love some­thing. Just recent­ly I found some­thing that I real­ly loved and it involved quite a lot of famous peo­ple and I was intim­i­dat­ed, but then I was in that mode of like, ​‘No, this is my film!’ And they didn’t agree. So they thought they want­ed me and then they were like, ​‘Mmm’ and we didn’t see quite eye-to-eye.’ And it’s alright now, I spoke to them I’d be like, ​‘You’ve made a mas­sive mis­take, that was my film.’ You have to have that kind of thing in order to real­ly take it and infuse so much of your­self and your cre­ative ideas into it and to make it your own. It just takes a lot of gump­tion, I guess.

Is choos­ing not to write because you want to focus your atten­tion on the oth­er cre­ative, direc­to­r­i­al aspects of film­mak­ing or is it just some­thing that you’re not com­fort­able with or not inter­est­ed in?

I think it’s a symp­tom of com­ing from the­atre, where as a direc­tor you don’t write a script very often. I grew up and devel­oped my skills as a direc­tor work­ing with so many amaz­ing new Aus­tralian writ­ers and I learned at NIDA [Nation­al Insti­tute of Dra­mat­ic Arts] how to com­mu­ni­cate with writ­ers, which is some­thing that I think peo­ple don’t do very well. And to fos­ter what they do to get the most out of them. But I also think writ­ing takes a lot of time and I love direct­ing so much that I don’t want to take months and months or years out to write things just to then be able to direct them, I just like doing back-to-back direct­ing jobs.

Peo­ple talk about auteur the­o­ry and this idea of the direc­tor-screen­writer as the god of it all. But there are so many incred­i­ble film­mak­ers all through­out the his­to­ry of clas­sic Hol­ly­wood who nev­er wrote, who just directed.

When I went to film school they hon­est­ly made me believe that you couldn’t be an auteur unless you were a writer/​director. And until I made Baby­teeth, and a few reviews called me an auteur, like I near­ly fell over, I didn’t even know that was pos­si­ble because that’s not what I had been told, and I thought, ​‘Wow, that’s like a dream come true, I nev­er thought that I’d ever be able to fall into that.’ But you’re right, and there are plen­ty of peo­ple in the past that I’ve looked up to that haven’t writ­ten either. I think it’s inter­est­ing how it has become this new idea that you have to do both, that it’s got to be your sto­ry that you tell. But the whole point of it is you’re enter­ing these dif­fer­ent worlds. I just love that – I don’t want to ever be labelled as this is what you do. I hope peo­ple can’t always recog­nise my work because I can shape-shift and find the story.

The film opens on Moses and Mil­la meet­ing on the train plat­form and it is this a moment of love at first sight. Could you talk a lit­tle bit about the chal­lenges of cap­tur­ing this piv­otal, but at the same time very sub­tle, moment?

That scene was a real­ly chal­leng­ing day on the shoot because it’s at a train sta­tion, it’s on a week­end, we’re on a pub­lic plat­form, and there was a lot to do – we had a stunt, we had blood, we had so much set to hap­pen. But also the fact that what you’re talk­ing about is right, you only meet Mil­la for a very small amount of time and she’s got no dia­logue before Moses lit­er­al­ly explodes into her life, knock­ing her over. I think in order to cap­ture a char­ac­ter and to under­stand who she is before you real­ly go on this jour­ney with her in such a short amount of time, it’s real­ly unusu­al struc­tural­ly for a sto­ry, you nor­mal­ly spend more time with them before you watch their trans­for­ma­tion. And so to get Eliza’s per­for­mance to say so much in such a lit­tle space was some­thing that we craft­ed through breath work and real­ly clev­er­ly with the look that we gave her. She had a wig on in that scene that looks like her real hair. And we had lit­tle freck­les that we put on her to just give her more colour and life.

Was it the same with Moses?

Yep. We had to break Toby Wal­lace (who plays Moses) down because he’s a good-look­ing guy and I want­ed him to look real­ly messed up in his skin pig­men­ta­tion and the tat­toos and the shorts and the shirt. So there was a lot that went into visu­al­ly just telling the sto­ry in that first open­ing scene. For me, what I want­ed to do of course was respect so much of the sub­ver­sive humour and tone that Rita has in there, so I love the idea that when he then tries to help her with the nose­bleed. Even in the audi­tion process I said just grab her and bring her all the way down to the floor with you, and we would laugh every time. And he was always so clum­sy and so ridicu­lous, but it’s com­plete­ly in char­ac­ter and perfect.

As some­one who works in the­atre, TV and film, are you going to be jug­gling all three of those dis­ci­plines in the future or has doing a fea­ture actu­al­ly made you han­ker for want­i­ng to do more of them?

It real­ly has, I def­i­nite­ly want to make anoth­er fea­ture. I mean, my next project is The Pow­er with Sis­ter Pic­tures who did Cher­nobyl in Eng­land. It’s based on the Nao­mi Alder­man nov­el for TV. With the­atre, I’ve been in the­atre since I was sev­en­teen so it’s an absolute love of mine, but now that I’ve switched over into TV and film I have to say I think it’s actu­al­ly a medi­um I am def­i­nite­ly more suit­ed to because I love the stress and the pace, and I think hav­ing direct­ed on stage for so long, giv­ing direc­tions real­ly quick­ly is some­thing I love and can do. So I think I real­ly want to make anoth­er feature.

Baby­teeth is released 14 August. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.