AFI FEST: Living it up with Viva

by Stefan Halley

Bringing back the sexy 70’s, Anna Biller knows what women want and proves that sexploitation films can be more than just fantasies for men.  Smart, sexy and in control, Anna is looking to change the way people view movies with her latest film Viva.  Viva explores the sexual revolution with an homage to late 60’s, early 70’s sexploitation films.  Forget the big budget Grindhouse films coming out these days, Anna knows what makes these films work and uses it recreate a true grind house experience.

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Q: You did an excellent job of capturing the look, feel and design of the last 60’s/early 70’s sexploitation films.  If it was a little faded and there was some dirt on the print, I would swear it was filmed circa 1970.  How were you able to reproduce the style so effectively?

A: I kept collecting objects and choosing wall colors, carpets, painting, directing the lighting, etc., until I felt like I was living in the world of one of those movies or a Playboy magazine. I looked at hundreds of pictures from decorating books and magazines, tore out pictures from Playboy, and watched dozens of movies, so I really knew the style. Then I went about designing the movie with an eagle eye. The same goes with actors. They have to look, sound and feel like those 60s and 70s actors. You have to choose a certain kind of face, voice, and character, then you dress wig, direct and mike them until they seem authentic.

Q: Did you have a problem being nude in the film and were any of the actors uncomfortable with the nudity?

A: The nudity was very difficult for me, and so were the bikinis! All of these issues come up about how you feel about your body, how it measures up to standards of mainstream actresses, how you want the audience to see you, and fear of stigma for doing it. Obviously you want the men in the audience to desire you if you are presenting yourself in the nude, but you also don’t want to put yourself in that position of vulnerability or of being an object for them. So when I realized how charged all of this was for me, of course it seemed important to do it, because these are after all the very issues I’m trying to work out in making a film about female sexuality. I was the only person who was uncomfortable with the nudity. Everyone else was an artist’s model, naturist, or free spirit. I think some of the crew was uncomfortable, though.

Q: Viva goes from naive housewife to sex object but never really becomes a vixen or slut.  She maintains a bit of purity.  Why didn’t you take the character further?

A: Viva has wild fantasies, but she is ultimately an innocent character, so she will always retain a bit of that. But she is also searching for the ultimate sexual experience, and there is an element where her innocence is also partly a role, a way to hide her desires and to lure the men in. I think the character is psychologically authentic rather than titillating, and that’s perhaps the difference between a woman’s picture and a man’s picture, you know?

Q: There are a lot of references to the sexual revolution and women’s liberation.  Viva seems to go along with everything not because she believes in women’s liberation but because she feels she should.  What are you saying about the character and women in the early 70’s?

A: I think that was the experience of a lot of women, especially timid ones. They were afraid to say no, or thought that it wasn’t cool to resist, or went with the flow. Viva is pathologically passive, and that’s not typical. But I wanted to suggest in some way that the sexual revolution was a big disappointment to women. So all of the language about women’s liberation is partly to show how the sexual revolution mostly failed to provide the pleasure and freedom for women that it promised them.

Q: Did the films of Radley Metzger, the Emmanuelle series and Italian sex comedies influence your work?

A: Yes, of course. Radley Metzger was the one director that really made me see how I could make a sex film and have it be for the woman. There is an entire scene in VIVA that is an homage to “Camille 2000.”

Q: The women in the film look like real women and not the waifs that you see in films these days.  When you were casting did you deliberately look for a more accurate representation of society?

A: Yes, I was going for types that reminded of the types in the Playboys and movies from the early 70’s. But they weren’t one type, they had a lot of different types back then. There are some voluptuous girls and some very slim girls in my movie, but even the slim girls are not bony, they are still sexy and curvy. I guess I was casting the way a male movie director would have cast at the time: for sex appeal. And that has to do with the entire girl, her personality, her smile, the way she moves and talks, everything.

Q: Personal grooming styles aren’t what they were in the 70’s.  Did you have a hard time finding people that weren’t shaven or did you rely on merkins?

A: Well actually, we did a nudist colony scene, and the poor makeup artists really did have their work cut out for them gluing on pubic hair, even on the men, and also covering up tattoos! But some of the girls had full natural bushes.

Q: You star as Viva and are in almost every scene.  Was it difficult to act and direct yourself?  Did you find it empowering to order all the people around?

A: Yes, acting and directing is a very difficult task, especially because you can’t see yourself. I’m very visual, and I have to always trust that everything looks right even though I’m not looking through the camera. And it’s difficult to always be worried about how you look when you are so busy concentrating on so many other things. That’s very tough. And you have to stay composed and calm, or it will show on camera.

Directing is empowering because it’s so difficult, so you feel good if you can make it work. I only feel really good on the set if everyone is excited about doing their part to make it all work. If the crew has that spirit, there’s no ordering, there’s only communicating ideas. But I think perhaps the people who aren’t into the spirit of the movie might feel ordered around.

Q: How did you prepare yourself for the role?  Viva has an aloof almost vapid nature to her.

A: I was inspired by the Euro dubbed sort of acting from that time, where beautiful actresses were not really required to act, but just to look beautiful in the different lighting and to maintain a still quality. I loved that. They were like mannequins, but they held a certain fascination. I started from that, then I just let myself be pulled along by the different scenes and how they made me feel. I registered very little emotion except in highly dramatic scenes. Much of the time I felt I was really living the scenes. So, I would be wooden on the outside, but inside I would be having a major freak-out. I think this shows on the screen.

Q: There are two scenes where Viva is basically raped.  What made you take the character in this direction?

A: She is naïve, she is hanging around a bad crowd, and she won’t put out. The men know they can have her if they take her by force, and so they do. But there are grey areas. Some would see them as seductions. For instance, is she really passed out, or is she just playing? Her eyes are always open, and she tends to respond with pleasure. She doesn’t complain about it afterwards. She even states at the end, “I became a female animal, made only for pleasure, and I liked it.” People are disturbed by this. Is that because they want Viva to be a more virtuous woman? Does her enjoyment of sex with strangers make her a distasteful character? Do they need to see her as a victim in order to feel that the men are more powerful than she is? You see, in the movie, none of this is spelled out. That was intentional.

Q: Musical numbers aren’t common to exploitation films.  What made you want to add the songs? 

A: I couldn’t resist. All of my movies have been musicals, and this started with only the one song in the orgy. But then I would think, “Oh wow, we have Bridget in the bathtub, and she’s dreaming about this white horse…wouldn’t it be great to have her sing about the horse?” Or, at the nudist colony, I thought we needed a hippie love song to really make that a good scene, etc. I’m not so meticulous about genre as people think. I actually like to mix up genres a little, and also structures. I never go with a totally conventional plot structure. At the end of the movie I thought I’d step out of the genre completely, and go back to the 50’s, with the Monroe-Russell-type number, because it fit the women’s fantasies at the time. They are licking their wounds, they are nostalgic for a more innocent time, so the movie goes there.

Q: Where did you find all that macramé?

A: I made most of it myself, and found a few vintage pieces on Ebay. Macramé is fun!! I did some crocheting too.

Q: The film really pops visually.  The colors just leap off the screen.  What equipment did you use to shoot the film?

A: We used a regular normal 35mm camera with really nice Zeiss prime lenses. And we used regular normal tungsten lights, and HMIs outdoors, but A LOT of them, and BIG ones. We lit outdoors in the bright sunlight, with giant lights. We wanted people to look LIT at all times. That’s how you get the big classic studio look. We had about ten times more power than I think a typical DP would use nowadays. It was ragingly hot on my sets, punishingly hot. That’s how you get colors to leap off the screen. Lots and lots of light, it brings out the true colors of things. If it’s underlit the colors get mixed with black, they go grey. And of course you have to meter it exactly right, because if it’s overexposed it will also lose color.

And you put very bright colors on the sets to begin with, that’s very important. People don’t realize how much of the look is actually art direction. Nowadays they don’t like to deal with art direction, so they purposefully leech all the color out, to create a uniformity to the look. The films now have so little color, they almost look like black and white films. We didn’t use any tricks: just light, color, and standard film stocks, what they’ve always used to create color in movies.

Q: Has the women’s movement progressed or regressed since the 70’s?  What do you think the state of women’s rights is today?

A: That’s tough one. Of course women are more independent now, and have more social and political power and better paying jobs. But in some ways we’ve regressed culturally. It’s the worst in the movies. And sexuality is a mess, I think for both genders. A big regression and lots of loss there. All in all, I think we’ve slid backwards quite a bit. This is a really bad time for women, actually. And all the more so because no one speaks about it or is aware of it.

Q: Are Viva’s experiences your fantasies?

A: I would say they are typical women’s fantasies: to be taken by a dark stranger, for instance, is a fantasy that can be found in any Harlequin Romance. Or to be the main course at an orgy, or to be desired by every man the room, or to be photographed as a model, or to spend one day being a prostitute.  Or to leave one’s husband and go on a journey, but to be able to come back and have things go back to normal. And of course, to sing on a stage in a red sequined dress.

Q: It’s easy to write off Viva a “camp” piece but there are a lot of social overtones and serious events the film.  What do you say to the people that write off Viva without looking for the deeper meaning?

A: I made it that way on purpose, so that people don’t have to see the deeper meaning if they don’t want to. I would never force anyone to see something they don’t naturally see. After all, it’s a piece of entertainment, and not a thesis. On some level I almost wanted it to seem like nonsense. That’s the power of sex films and advertising, that they appeal to the irrational side of people. But I think that people subconsciously get the deeper levels, that the meaning seeps in. That’s after all how art works.

Q: What is the ultimate message of Viva?

A: Early on, before I shot VIVA, I wrote on my website that it was a movie “without social messages of any kind.” I don’t think it has any single message. Most films nowadays have a political thesis attached, but I think VIVA is more complex than that.

Q: What is your next project? 

A: I’m writing a movie about a sex witch, which is based on certain pulp novels and sex movies of the 70s, but which is also going to be a melodrama and have elements of horror. I’m tempted to make it encyclopedic about witchcraft, the way VIVA is encyclopedic about the sexual revolution.

Viva
USA, 2007, 120 min, 35 MM

DIR: Anna Biller
SCR: Anna Biller
PROD/ED/PROD DES: Anna Biller
CO-PROD: Jared Sanford
DP: C. Thomas Lewis
CAST: Anna Biller, Jared Sanford, Bridget Brno, Chad England, Marcus DeAnda, John Klemantaski, Barry Morse, Paolo Davanza, Cole Chipman

Get ready for a kinky night at AFI FEST, as Anna Biller takes us on a trip back to the swinging 70s for a delicious tribute/parody to soft-core pornography and sexual liberation.

This fantastic, one-of-a-kind sexploitation film seems at once wholly fresh in its spot-on execution and, at the same time, like some artifact from a randy cinematic past. Biller, a multi-hyphened talent in the extreme, writes, directs, stars in, edits, shoots and designs the costumes and sets. The film tells the hilariously off-kilter tale of a suburban housewife in 1972 who is abandoned by her husband and goes out to find herself in the middle of the sexual revolution. As she seeks love and adventure, she is dragged through the worlds of nudist colonies, hippies, modeling, prostitution, bi-sexuality and bohemia.

A singular work of art with a lot on its mind, VIVA illustrates cinema’s unique ability to blend high and low culture. And there are plenty of lewd laughs along the way. So let down your hair. And leave your underpants at home.

Screening Times:

Tuesday, November 6th 10:00pm
ArcLight Theatre 13

Wednesday, November 7th 4:00pm
ArcLight Theatre 12