The funny, smart, poignant universe of Lena Dunham developed first through her shorts and the Nerve.com Web series Tight Shots, but a distillation of her concerns is perhaps best seen in her feature debut Creative Nonfiction.

Starring as the film's lead, Dunham plays Ella, a somewhat wide-eyed creative whose college entanglements with sometimes love interest Chris (David Unger) and tenuous, quick-to-betray friend Carly (Slaine Jenkins) inform the work of her still developing screenplay. As the two stories are told simultaneously, the real life, digi-framed angst of Ella's crush and burn and the poetic, film-grained narrative of her screenplay, Creative Nonfiction lives within realms of the humorous and bittersweet, exploring without bashfulness or shame the difficulty and absurdity of growing up.

For the next two weeks, SM takes a look at Dunham's work. Both conversations were held prior to the filmmaker's editorial contributions to the magazine. We thank her not only for speaking with us here but for joining in as well.

SM: The humor of your work audiences can always cling onto, but what I love about Creative Nonfiction is all its bittersweetness and the way that you were able to make the jokes play into that. The first joke of that nature in the film is the ‘hegemony’ joke. [The main characters quip about the borderline excessive, pretentious use of the word ‘hegemony’ by artsy collegiates.] It’s within the first five minutes of the film. It's a very intellectual humor, but it’s also playful, sexy and irreverent…So, I was hoping you could talk a little about the way you approached humor, specifically for this story because at the end of the day it’s actually a really heartbreaking one.

LD: A lot of experiences in the film just came out of my general experience and understanding of what it was like to be in college, and, I think, when you’re in college, if you don’t laugh at it, you will die. The experience of being in this very strange, surreal world with all people your age who are away from their parents for the first time, it’s a recipe for disaster but also a recipe for humor, and so, I’ve always felt like I’m in the experience of college but am also watching it from outside, being like, “Oh, my god, this is so absurd. I can’t wait to tell this story to my dad, or I can’t wait to write this in an e-mail to my friend who’s somewhere else.” Collecting those experiences and thinking, “What do these make as a whole?,” it just felt very natural that humor would be a part of telling that story.

SM: Talking about the relationship between characters, the friendship between Ella and Carly I think is great. There’s a moment where, I think, Ella turns to Carly and says, “I never would have been your friend in the past.” To me that’s what so much of college is, just randomly meeting people by circumstance.

LD: …Those friends that you make during college orientation, sort of out of desperation, you’re like, “I cannot be alone. I’m leaving high school, this group of close knit people,” or even a not close knit group of people but you have your family. So, I was thinking [with the film] about those friends who I just went, “Oh, you’ll work for a few days.” Then you develop these attachments that seemingly come from nowhere with these people who you initially thought, “This could never be a real friendship.” They become capable of totally hurting you and being a part of your life. It’s sort of unbelievable because it’s making friends in a way that’s both really organic and really artificial.

I definitely had a situation during my college orientation where I met this girl, and we were both transfer students. So our experience as being transfer students made us come together, even though we had virtually nothing in common. The friends I made later on were like, “Why are you hanging onto this friendship?” I was like, “Well, we really communicated during orientation,” and of course, ultimately, something similar to what happens in the movie, happened. I realized, “Oh, I had an instinct about you the whole time.” Then, of course, because it’s a small campus, I was petrified to put it in a film. Ultimately I decided I had to, and it was my quiet revenge. So now, whenever I see her on campus, I feel both this secret pride and total humiliation, like, “You probably don’t think about me that often, yet I took the time to make a movie with a character based on you.”

SM: It’s definitely strange, the relationship between females. Lynn Shelton’s My Effortless Brilliance came out this year, and in talking with Film Threat, she mentioned that some of her female friendships end in these platonic break-ups, and at times they're worse than she expected.

The thought is interesting as it applies to this film in that there’s a seeming disintegration of almost all strong female relationships here. Even though Ella is still friends with Audrey Gelman’s character [Edie] by the end of the film, there’s such flippancy to their interactions that I’m not even certain that’s lasting. So you end up at the end of the film in a nice blended metaphor where we get the end of the actual screenplay Ella is writing play out dire, but then there’s that image of her in real time packing the bag, and she’s ultimately alone.

It makes me wonder if all friendship is that ephemeral, if our platonic relationships are just as hard to deal with as Ella’s semi break-up with Chris, what relationship means more in the end throughout Creative Nonfiction?

LD: I totally agree with that statement, that platonic break-ups can be even more traumatic. There's a way that those come a lot more naturally than romantic relationships, so when those break-ups happen in a friendship it can be really, really shocking.

Not to get too meta about the whole thing, but it was really interesting filming with Audrey, who's a really close friend of mine in real life. Talking about that flippancy you describe, sometimes I would have guilt because I'd be like, "You could be off doing something else, and I'm forcing you to be in my movie for no money, sit around and help me work through all my problems in this context." I think there's a way that girlfriends tend to take advantage of each other and think that the other will always be around, and when that evaporates that can be incredibly traumatic in a way that it's not with a male relationship because in the back of your mind, you always expected that to fade. I don't know if that's too dark a perspective to take, but especially in college, you are always in the back of your mind thinking, "Okay, this guy is nice, but how long can this last?" Whereas with your girlfriends, you don't see an end in sight.

SM: Before we talk about the relationship between Ella and Chris, and I'm anxious to get to that because some of my favorite dialogue in the film is in their scenes, how did you actually go about the writing process for this?

LD: This is something I really haven't admitted: I was actually trying to write the screenplay within the screenplay. I had this idea which started by listening to The Best of Paul Simon, sitting in my car and coming up with this road trip narrative. I was trying to write it, and it just was not going anywhere. It felt so flat, and I felt so disconnected from it.

I'd just had this whole real life drama play out at college, which was really what was occupying my mind, and one night I was lying in bed, feeling like a big loser because I couldn't get the screenplay out...Suddenly it occurred to me that if this other thing was occupying my mind so consistently, I really had to write it down. Basically, in two weeks, I expressed what had happened to me in the previous semester of college. Then, after I vomited that out, I tried to work with it and make it more cinematic, make it a story that had more of an arc than real life does.

So it was a very organic process that came out of real, personal discomfort and a desire to have something creative come out of that.

SM: So then, as you wrote in the Joe Lewis' article, there's that metapersonal angle.

LD: Exactly. That's a word my boyfriend likes to use a lot. He says that about all the movies I like. I'm a big Caveh Zahedi fan. I'm a big fan of taking three steps back from your life and then looking at it from a million different angles. I find it really soothing and also kind of provocative.

SM: With that metapersonal angle, and already you mentioned how organic it was to involve Audrey, but how did you go about working with the rest of the cast?

LD: (Eleonore Hendricks) I always imagined in that role. We have a mutual friend named Bill who once told me that he thought Eleonore looked like a homeless, little girl, and suddenly I could not stop seeing her as a homeless, little girl. So I immediately imagined her in that part, and she was so amazing, just came in, filmed for a day, just totally embodied this character even though (the role) was silent. So really in the 16mm part [of the film] I was thinking about the way that people looked because I knew I wasn't going to hear their voices.

With the characters at college, in the part that's really dialogue heavy, I was thinking a lot about people who I could have really organic interactions with. There was a script, but I knew I wanted people who were not to actory and would work with it a pretty natural way. David was actually my boyfriend's roommate. He's an improv comedy guy, so I knew he could be funny, but I had this feeling that it also had this edge to it. And so we read together, and I just felt like, "You're perfect. You're cute in a weird way, but it's not like you're some traditional heartbreaker stud, which makes the whole thing a little sharper when he actually does hurt her feelings."

Then the character who devirginizes my character is my friend (Jeffrey Cristiani), and frankly I cast him because I could not think of anyone who would be less inhibited. He's the least inhibited human I've ever met, and I knew he would just make it so fun and comfortable to shoot that scene.

SM: (laughs shyly) That scene's intensely sad.

LD: I know! It's so funny because afterwards, Jeff was making these jokes like, "Lena, that was pretty spicy, right? We should try that again," just making stupid jokes, and after he saw (the scene), he was like, "Oh, my god, I did not realize how depressed you looked. I was sitting there feeling satisfied with myself, and you're like crying."

SM: (laughs) That's exactly what would have happened in real life. That makes it even funnier.

LD: He was like, "This makes me feel so bad for every girl I ever devirginize." I was like, "Don't get too serious with it." Then my dad met him at a film screening, and my dad was like, "You have shamed our entire family." Of course my dad was joking, but Jeff looked like he was going to have a heart attack.

Slaine, who plays Carly, she's actually trying to be an actress in New York right now; she's had some appearances on Gossip Girl, (laughs) which seems kind of appropriate. She was always considered the hottest, most movie star girl on our campus. We actually went to high school together, and so I was really comfortable with her. I've known her for a long time.

SM: Now because you star in a lot of your work, how do you go about working with your actors and then working with yourself as an actor?

LD: I can probably stand to work with myself a little more as an actor. I'm often worrying so much about other people that I just throw myself into it.

With my actors, we wouldn't do very much preparation. I'd have them look at the script, and then we'd just get together an hour before we were meant to shoot a scene and just talk it out. I'd say, "Do you have any issues with the script? What does this make you feel?" Then we'd basically do it for the first time on camera, which I think might not always work, but it worked for this project. It lent it that slight feeling of discomfort that it has.

The challenge of acting while directing is that there are times I wish I could have been more in control of the visual aspect, and so I think it's really important to have a DP that you trust if you're doing this. This is a very specific, casual camera style, but if I were doing something more tightly structured, I'd be much more nervous stepping out from behind the camera.

SM: It was very interesting, the use of the camera here, specifically with the portrait of Ella. I know you were working with cinematographers Brett Jutkiewicz and Hannah Lesser in each medium. What I noted is that within each format, Ella seems aware that she's being watched, and at different points, specifically at the beginning of the film, Ella looks directly in camera. So there's a very strange, intimate relationship that you develop with her as a viewer because you don't know if she knows you're the voyeur. I didn't fully understand that space, if there was a fourth wall, so to speak, to the film, or if the fourth wall was intentionally thin and transparent.

LD: What happened basically was that I showed one of the first scenes to a film professor I have. He's amazing, a documentary filmmaker, and so he's coming at it from a really different perspective. He was like, "You know, Lena, I would say that the genre this most reminds me of is low-budget porn." At first I almost burst into tears, but he said, "I mean that as a compliment," which was really ridiculous to hear from a teacher.

He really helped me to see that the camera was a character and that we were so up in there that to think that the characters were oblivious to this was almost impossible. I realized that somehow the camera could, in some abstract way, reflect the feeling of living in a dorm, in this close proximity with all these other people, in this time in your life when you're going through all of these really intense, quick changes. I started to think, at least in my own head, about the camera as being the eyes of other people that you know are there and often try to ignore. Sometimes it becomes impossible to do that. I didn't think that much about the "looking at the camera," but, afterwards, when it came up a lot, I thought, "This is not something that I need to cut around. This is something I need to embrace in this particular project."

SM: And, it's interesting in that it's only her character, and it's appropriate because it's her story. For me, as a viewer, it would have been jarring had any other character been equally cognizant of that gaze.

Outside this idea of lo-fi porn, there's also something interesting about the idea of a writer being able to step outside herself, and then there's the lovely narcissism to her character, which she even mentions to Audrey's character, that she worries that she's written herself into a story. In a lot of ways, that's what that time period is about, of being young, in that bridge to adulthood, that you have to go through that narcissism.

LD: Being a teenager is such a narcissistic time. It's also sort of an addictive feeling to be that focused on yourself, and it takes a while for that to wear off.

SM: Then perhaps all of adulthood is just fighting off layers of narcissism. It's almost as if it's a defense mechanism.

LD: Absolutely.

SM: But, then beyond that the narcissism is also a soulful center. So it's not a bad thing.

LD: But it's a very present thing.

I'm always struggling with the idea that filmmaking itself, especially the kind of filmmaking I'm interested in, is generally a really narcissistic activity. I'm sometimes really self-critical about that.

SM: Being self-critical, how do you self-evaluate in these pieces? Are you able to step outside yourself, and say, "This piece of art is mine,"? What does that piece of art, piece of film become to you at the point that it premieres?

LD: A big thing for me, and I thought about this a lot when I was making Tight Shots, in which I didn't even bother to change my name, was just how scary it was. If you're a filmmaker who's not acting in your own work, it's still very much yours, but it's somehow easier to distant yourself because your image is not involved. I found that out when I directed a piece that I didn't appear in, and it felt really good.

Both my parents are artists. My dad is an artist who paints graphically sexual images that he then puts up in galleries all over the world, and I think that seeing how comfortable he is with the work that he produces, saying, "This is mine. I did this," not going so far as to say, "Screw you if you don't like it," but to say, "I understand that you could have a problem with this, but this is important for me to do," I've always admired that in him. So even when I can't really achieve it for myself, I try to keep that attitude in mind.

SM: I'll digress for a second to speak more about your family...Knowing that your parents are artists, and they were obviously supportive of you when you went to study stand-up comedy as a teen, what was it like growing up in that environment?

LD: It's been really interesting. I'm incredibly close to them, and I really respect what they do. It's been really great because it gave me the opportunity to--I never felt like anything was off limits to me. I never felt like there was anything that it wouldn't be appropriate for me to explore. In fact, it felt like the only thing that would be inappropriate for me to explore would be some normal person career. (laughs) Maybe "normal person career" is not the right phrase. But, I felt like what would be most alien to my parents was if I chose to do something that was more people-focused, like becoming a doctor, becoming a lawyer, something that wasn't so turned inward in a certain way.

It's also interesting that, because I am so close to them, it's sometimes hard for me to separate, "I'm a kid, and you're my parents, and we're at different phases in our lives." They're really productive, doing things, showing their work all the time, and somehow I felt that I had to keep up, even though I'm thirty-eight years younger than they are. Because we're such good friends, it was hard for me to remember that I wasn't being held to the same standards.

SM: Before you mentioned your dad ribbing on Jeff a bit at a film screening. What did your parents end up thinking of Creative Nonfiction?

LD: It was really interesting. My mom [filmmaker Laurie Simmons] executive produced it, which really just means she bought pizza for everyone and rented the vans...She made a movie two years ago called The Music of Regret, which was a weird, artsy short that starred Meryl Streep. Everyone wants to see things that Meryl Streep is in, so it got more attention because of that. And so, I was really nervous about what she'd think. I really wanted her to feel like it had been a good investment of her time and energy, and I also really respect what she does.

She doesn't really watch any movies that are that low-budget or done on digital video, and so, I think, for her it was an aesthetic that she didn't understand, that there were other things that shared aesthetic interests with it. So she was a little bit like, "This looks different than everything else. People are going to think this is so nutty. What is this?" Then, as I introduced her to more film that's interesting to me, she started to see it in context more, and she actually called me last week and was like, "I watched the movie again, and I really like it."

SM: That's great.

LD: It was really nice. We're actually trying to write a script together right now. That to me, the fact that she wanted to do that, showed that she got it and saw why it was important for me to do at least.

SM: Talking a bit more about the film that you like of the same aesthetic, I know you often collaborate with the Red Bucket crew, and in credits for Creative Nonfiction, you thank Joe Swanberg and Andrew Semans. What other films and filmmakers are you watching now? What about that aesthetic is exciting you right now?

LD: A lot of people have said this, but the movie that rocked me was Funny Ha Ha. I watched that right before I wrote the script. I didn't know that you were allowed to do things like that. I just didn't think it was possible to make a movie that talked about people your own age doing the things that they actually do. When I realized that, and the fact that it looked so kind of handmade, it was amazing to me. That introduced me to the cult of what was called "mumblecore." It introduced me to Joe Swanberg's films, which eventually introduced me to Nerve Video. Then I saw Four-Eyed Monsters and films by the Duplass brothers. I really respect and appreciate all of that. I'm so glad it exists. And, Lynn Shelton, I love her work too.

The filmmakers who I think about--their visual aesthetic and their ideas about story--the people that I feel the most lined up with are: I'm obsessed with Caveh Zahedi. His way of telling a story is amazing to me; I've also always really loved the work of Nicole Holofcener. I've always been attracted to the way she approaches humor, as we discussed before. She's so funny, but it's so subtle. It's something I've aspired to, ever since I saw Walking and Talking. I was like, "This is making me feel so many things at once." I was really impressed by how multi-layered it was, how the humor was in there. And, I told you, I just saw In Between Days by So Yong Kim...It's such an incredible movie. It was made in Canada. She's a Korean-American woman, but it's in Korean. I was trying to describe it to someone, and I said it was like mumblecore in Korean, which gives mumblecore a whole different energy--this idea of two people not being able to communicate, then the whole other layer of them being immigrants. It's shot on digital video but elevating digital video to the highest, most beautiful form of photography. It tells a really important story about a lady, which is always so nice to see.

SM: Now that you say that I believe it was spoken of early on in the mumblecore debates.

LD: And Mike Leigh. Everything Mike Leigh that's ever happened I just can't get enough of.

Sometimes I feel like I'm too much of a fan of everything just because I love watching movies so much. It's not always that hard to please me, which can be embarrassing.

SM: It's awesome to have that passion for everything, and I think it's what informs a work and allows it to be good. If you do passionately love that much, you're able to absorb all of that and make it more readily available for your own work. I've yet to meet a filmmaker who doesn't love films passionately.

LD: It's funny, my boyfriend's job is to coordinate all the video equipment for my college. He's like, "You know what's really weird? I have this job, and I go out with you, and I don't really like movies that much," which is so interesting. He can like a specific movie, but the medium doesn't do it for him the way that music or literature does it for him. It's kind of nice because if he was as obsessed with film as me, (laughs) we'd have really one track conversations.

SM: What's he into?

LD: His thing is philosophy, and he's also a dancer. He's a really serious modern dancer.

SM: That's awesome.

LD: It's really awesome. I don't have any understanding of dance, but he's so good at it. It's amazing to watch him because he loves doing it so much. Also, I always thought modern dancing was really frilly, but it can be very masculine looking I've learned.

SM: On that note about philosophy, my favorite line of Creative Nonfiction is one after Chris asks Ella for a three word description of her transcendent experience as she was going through her existential crisis, and she comes up with, "I went godward"--which is an answer I love and think is amazing.

LD: Oh, I'm so glad you think so. I felt a little sheepish about that. I didn't want to be too weighty. I guess everyone gets self-conscious about that.

SM: There's a lot of validity to that statement, and going back to this idea of themetapersonal, I was wondering how much of that statement is true for you. What actually do those three words mean in the context of this film?

LD: I have a rotating existential crisis where every three years I'll be like, "Oh, my god, we're all going to die," that feeling that we all have for the first time in the seventh grade, and then it never quite goes away. At least for me.

I don't think of myself as an atheist, but I'm definitely not a religious person. So, for me, personally, it's just the idea of having some kind of faith--maybe faith is the wrong word--but an investment in the idea that there's something greater than yourself. If I thought that I was the be all and end all, I would not be able to continue on.

Also for Ella what was happening was that she was coming to realize that there is something beyond college, beyond the humiliation that she's suffering. She, obviously in the movie is me, when I'm acting it, but she's very embarrassed about the fact that she said that out loud but hoping it can be helpful.

SM: That's true of most things we say to people. When we're honest, there's always a certain vulnerability to anything that's said. So there is that embarrassment we feel when we're being honest with others.

Recently I was having a conversation with James Ponsoldt and Amy Seimetz about their short film We Saw Such Things, and they were talking about this idea of honesty. They both took different approaches to the topic. James was saying that this digital aesthetic that pulls a lot from improv and naturalism, that the goal of that aesthetic is to make something look real, but the reality of any form of cinema is that it's a fabrication. So all you can actually aim for is not reality but honesty.

LD: Absolutely.

SM: I agree with James about that, but then Amy came back and said, "You know, I think in the end, you can't even be honest in a film because there's no universal honesty. All there is, is a feeling. All that cinema is, all narrative cinema is, is a map of feelings. Your feelings can be honest, but there's no universal truth that's honest."

In thinking about that concept, as it applies to this film, I wonder where you stand, if you're goal was to replicate some reality, or if this concern of honesty was more pressing, or if in fact, like Amy, you throw both of those concepts of reality and honesty out the door and end up with this map of feelings?

LD: (The idea of reality) is such a flawed concept to begin with. So, for me, my major goal was to be honest about--and, I couldn't even really be honest about others' experiences because the whole film was done so through my lens--but, to be honest about all the super-embarrassing feelings that came up for me during that time in my life, that "special time in a woman's life".

SM laughs.

LD: I just hoped that my honesty could resonate with other people, but especially other women. In my heart of hearts, that would be what I would wish for.

As Dunham and I spoke for quite a bit longer, check in next week for a continuation of this conversation. In the meantime, visit the filmmaker's Web site at www.pistolskillponies.com.

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