CS Weekly Archive > From the Trenches > 11/20/09

Trouble-Maker:
Women in Trouble's Sebastian Gutierrez

BY ADAM STOVALL

Sebastian Gutierrez, writer of Gothika and Snakes on a Plane, sat down with a very clear, very simple goal in mind—write a 10-page scene between two characters in one location. For reasons that you'll read about in the following Q&A, this short grew into a feature film, Women in Trouble, which opened at the Arclight, among other theatres, on November 13th.
 
Women in Trouble follows a dozen women through 24, ahem, troublesome hours in L.A. A porn star receives some complicated news, then gets trapped in an elevator with a woman who seems very near a nervous collapse. Two hookers witness a crime and flee to a bar with a psychiatrist who has also just received some troubling news. A flight attendant seizes a rare opportunity, a child sees more than she should, and the world's most understanding masseuse hears a confession that would make any number of priests and nuns blush.
 
Gutierrez shot Women in Trouble in 12 days on a budget of around $12,000, which he accomplished by casting friends and shooting in readily-accessible locations, such as his house. With the advent of low-cost filmmaking tools and the internet as a distribution venue, it's never been easier to make a film and get it in front of people. Like Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog, Women in Trouble serves as an inspiration to those tired of mindless, big-budget spectacles that forsake character for stuff getting blowed up real good —and a reminder of what a few kindred spirits can do with some creativity and initiative.
 
CS Weekly recently spoke with Sebastian Gutierrez about his latest film.
 
This began with a 10-page scene between two characters. What was your intention in making this a short?
My intention was to test out working with hi-def cameras.  I've always been a  film purist—and still am—but it seemed like a short subject would be the perfect way of trying out making a chunk of movie with very portable, inexpensive elements where the focus was all on performance.
 
How did it grow from a short to a feature?
Once I started assembling a crew and working out the logistics for the short, it started seeming like a shame to waste all that effort on just one day of work. It seemed like people were very game to do something for the no-money experiment of it, and actors heard about it and were interested in participating.  So, I started thinking of expanding the whole thing and trying to make 10 mini-movies and string them together.
 
How did the process of writing a film like this, one that's more episodic in nature, differ from writing the more straightforward scripts you've done before?
It was like a game: write 10 10-page scenes that take place in a single location between groups of two or three actors. Dialogue, more than action, has to run the show and move the characters forward.
 
The episodes needed to be self contained.  At first they were meant to be even more so, but then certain characters seemed to be asking to be related to other characters, and so the interconnectivity sprung from there.  
 
What is your writing habit? Hours a day, days a week? How does it differ when you're developing ideas from when you're focused on one screenplay?
I write something every day.  I tend to obsess non-stop about a script for a few weeks, making notes. Then I sit down and write a first draft very fast—in a  feverish state, late at night. When it's one of mine, that is.  Studio work is different.  More like homework. I try to write five pages a day of those and call it a good day.

Did you do character-specific passes of each individual storyline? Was there an instance where a story felt too slight and you went back and expanded it?
The episode with Joe Gordon-Levitt was written during the shooting and added as a coda. Partly because by then we'd started toying with the idea of a companion piece and partly because I thought it would be interesting to further mess around with Adrianne Palicki's dumb-blonde stereotype by giving her an actual skill that points the way forward as to something she could do with her life.  All while remaining true to the character, of course.
 
With immediate access to people like Carla Gugino, an actress that has shown great acumen in picking interesting filmmakers and screenplays over the years, how early do you show work to them?
I never show any script until it's done. Or at least until I think it's done. With Carla—she's so savvy about character that she will always offer organic ideas that improve the script. At the same time, she comes from that increasingly rare school of actors where she will first try to make work what's on the page without ad-libbing or presuming the words themselves aren't carefully chosen.
 
What is the vetting process like on a project where the people reading the script will be playing the roles, or was that even a concern?
Not really a concern. I always take great comfort in the fact that, if I'm the writer-director, if anybody comes up with suggestions that improves the script, I don't need to beg the screenwriter to go along with it. I'm up for trying anything that works, and I make sure the actors know that ahead of time.
 
Once you'd cast the film, did you go back and tailor any parts to that specific actor?
I tried, but they wouldn't let me! Like once the British actor that was going to play Nick Chapel couldn't do it and Josh stepped in, I attempted to switch the character to a more shitkicking Lynyrd Skynyrd kinda Southern rocker, but Josh would have none of it.  As it turns out, he was right. The character is much funnier with him and his British accent. Ideally, I'd like to be able to tailor the roles to them during rehearsal, but oftentimes (and certainly in the case of this mad-rush schedule), that isn't always possible.
 
Will the rest of the trilogy bear the same punk, do-it-yourself aesthetic as this film, or are you looking to grow in scope and scale in the subsequent films?
The aesthetic is a little more elegant, even if the spirit continues to be DIY in practice. We had four more days of shooting on the second one.  There's black-and-white flashbacks, there's a song-and-dance dream sequence.  And hopefully by the third one we can graduate to Red cameras and actual dollies!

Adam Stovall spends his time watching the movies that are in theaters, and writing the ones he wishes were.



Sebastian Gutierrez, Women in Trouble courtesy Screen Media Films

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