The director and actor delve into their new film about a 26-year-old virgin’s sexual awakening.
At the center of attention of Lena Dunham ’s strange , funny , and occasionally puzzle newfangled filmSharp Stickis Sarah Jo , played by Kristine Froseth . Sarah Jo dress like a tag skirt and speaks like a mouse might . When she eat on yogurt , she catch it all over her mouth . She lives with her mommy ( Jennifer Jason Leigh ) and her influencer - wannabe sister ( Taylour Paige ) in a Los Angeles apartment coordination compound where Sarah Jo is responsible for giving tenant eviction warnings . She ’s a 26 - year - old virgin who had a hysterectomy when she was a teenager and has already gone through menopause , but , spurred by a sudden desire to explore her sexuality , begins an affair with the openhanded , goofy , and very married beginner ( Jon Bernthal ) of the special - needs boy for whom she cares . ( Dunham plays his significant married woman . )
Sharp Stickcharts Sarah Jo ’s journeying to pleasure in at times untune thoroughness . Dunham , who was inspired by her ownsurgery following adenomyosis , follow her through her initial puppy love and heartbreak as she starts to take a more clinical approach to sexual know - how , finally put down somewhere adjacent to enlightenment . It ’s a distinctly idiosyncratic film , one that seems to delight in pushing buttons . To delve deep , Thrillist got on a Zoom call with Dunham and Froseth — whose previous credits include Hulu’sLooking for Alaskaand Showtime’sThe First Lady — out front ofSharp Stick ’s July 29 theatrical release .
Thrillist : Sarah Jo lives in this quad between maturity — she had an emergency hysterectomy as a teen — and utmost innocence . Lena , how did you find her in the writing process ? And how did that evolve once Kristine follow on board?Lena Dunham : I was write the moving picture while I was view a lot of films from the ' 70s with female protagonists , thinking about the agency that those characters were both leave to be intimate but also not really have any agency over their intimate power . They were excessively wise - cracking and fledged while also not of necessity being able to in reality take any possession of their life or their bodies . And I start thinking , " What if we were to repeal all of those figure ? " Some of the most interesting things that you get to do in your writing is take aspects of yourself and metastasise them so that they become much larger . I talk to Kristine about this : Despite being around worlds like the art mankind or Hollywood where multitude trafficked in certain kinds of uttermost knowledgeability , I always had a little turn of a naiveness and a credulousness that sometimes suffice me well and sometimes served me less well .
Design by Maitane Romagosa for Thrillist
Then it really was one of those things where it was like this fully birthed , half - pansy narrative came out in my head . This case was almost like a niggling bit of a sketch princess turn sidewise . I had very distinct idea in my chief about who was going to act the other character , but I have it off that Sarah Jo was going to be someone I did n’t know yet . Meeting Kristine , the limpidity with which she spoke about the character was really amazing , and she ’s so disarmingly intelligent . She stepped on set and had this completely new take that brought an only other proportion . Her power to both really believe and suspend her mental rejection and to make the character really tangible while also subsist in the fantasy was such a gift to me as a director . I just texted her last Nox , " You are my full - on muse . "
Kristine Froseth : I love you .
What films were you watching , Lena?Dunham : I was suppose about everything fromLooking for Mr. Goodbarto Barbara Loden’sWandato movies like Elaine May’sMikey and Nicky , where you get to see these tragic women step in and step out . It ’s interesting because inMikey and Nicky , the women who get one scene are more fully realize than fair sex who get whole movies now , but there ’s also all these really complicated intimate political science absorb all of those movies .
Utopia
Kristine , how did you think about Sarah Jo after reading the script?Froseth : Honestly , everything is on the varlet . Lena writes it . It ’s so visual . The character description of what she was wearing and the relationship she has with her family , it ’s all there . So , I just have to take that and strain and connect with it . I mean , I really resonated with Sarah Jo for several reasons , so that was an easy connectedness there . fortunately , Lena is so genial and she pass hours going through the playscript with me because I enjoy to dive in and get really nerdy about it . But I render to just start meeting Sarah Jo where she is . And it ’s such a discovery where we ’re meeting her at a metre where she ’s challenge her life and having this awakening with her identity , with her medical psychic trauma , and also just figuring out what desire mean to her , what love stand for to her . She ’s have so many dissimilar awakening .
Dunham : Kristine will come in with bank note — it was like a mellow school binder . I have it away it because she would really ask , like , " What does this line signify ? " Those are things that , as a writer , you do n’t get demand or even challenged on very often . It was such a quick shoot , and it would ’ve been so wanton for her to just speed through it and keep moving . And she just attacked it like it wasThe Odyssey , and I feel so lucky .
How did you come up with her artistic and body terminology , down to the way she eat yogurt?Dunham : The yogurt ’s really awful . It was in the script that she deplete a lot of yoghurt , but the first time Kristine actually ate the yoghurt , I accrue out of my chair because I did n’t cognize that there was such a funny direction to eat up yogurt and suddenly it became this awesome detail that reverberate her hunger for life and her hungriness for experience . Her hunger was all in those bites that she took , and also the manner it contrast with the much more soft and specific way her mamma and her sister ate . But , in terms of her esthetic , I was think about little ' 70 sketch , like Holly Hobbie and Strawberry Shortcake and when you have a sleeping handbag with one of them on it and you ’re like , " What if that sleeping bag came to life and was an outfit ? " There was some character descriptions that discussed what she was wearing , but something awing that Kristine did is she made a full mood circuit board that was capable to give to me and Katina Danabassis , our costume designer , and it was so deeply helpful . I was like , " Kristine , you came of age in the 2000s . How do you even eff what this is ? Did you prison term - traveling and come back with references ? "
What was on your mood table ? Why did you want to make it?Froseth : I frankly wish I had a upright answer for it . I just was on Pinterest for hr , and I was just discover these thing that just click . It ’s not something I can necessarily explain — it just was . I just feel like she very much kick the bucket off of how she ’s feeling , and it ’s just colourful , it ’s just intuitive , I pretend . And to me , it just felt like this is how Sarah Jo would rust a yogurt .
Dunham : One day a Holly Hobbie mug showed up in my mail , and I was like , " Who would be amazing enough that they would send this to me ? " I could n’t find the note . And then I was like , " It was Kristine . " I basically started to shout because it ’s the greatest matter I ’ve ever possess . But also I just could n’t conceive that she had translate it . I mean , I was like , " How are you not just referencing Lizzie McGuire ? You ’re so unseasoned . "
Froseth : Too coolheaded . Sarah Jo ’s sang-froid in her own way though .
Dunham : She ’s really cool in her own mode . And the other thing is like , I have a very cool , chic female parent who always was search great in a Issey Miyake suit or whatever . I really reacted to that as a kid by essentially dress up like a flyspeck rendering ofThe Nanny . And I liked the idea that Sarah Jo was answer to her mom ’s aesthetic and her sister ’s aesthetic with her own aesthetic because she ca n’t necessarily assert herself verbally and she ca n’t necessarily swan herself physically , but through the elbow room that she grace her world and her organic structure , she can show she also has a unambiguously loving and bright way of realize the world that ’s verbalise through the thing that she ’s attracted to .
How did you think about the social structure of the movie ? After Sarah Jo ’s affair with Josh ends , there ’s a transmutation as she aggressively tries to see unlike intimate acts , but it also becomes more grotesque . Dunham : I was favorable enough with this motion-picture show that I was n’t make believe it in a studio apartment anatomical structure where it needed to bond to certain form of ideas or beats that possibly someone who was get behind a more traditional process would take for . It was definitely a eminence that I bring forth that the motion picture felt like it was divided into two . There was a love affair story and then there was this 2d routine that almost had a different feeling . That was very knowing because there is this feeling when your first real relationship ends where it ’s like your world cracks open and something totally new happens . If we could echo that tone and it could almost be , instead of three bit , these two very specific films that are colligate by this one really specific character , then that could be a really interesting way to express that idea .
I wanted to ask about the final gibe , which integrate animation and features a unembodied duet of deal cradling Sarah Jo ’s expression . Why did you go for that stylistic departure?Dunham : Sometimes the final present moment of a movie is so evident to you and you know exactly what it is , and sometimes it takes a second to get there . I wo n’t say precisely what it was , but initially there was a different final shooter of the picture show and it was something that made sense to me deeply in the writing . I imagine I realize that sometimes when you love a lineament so much , it ’s toilsome to know where to hold on with them . I remember thinking I could make three more motion picture about her and I belike would . I knew that if this was going to be our last second with her , I require it to be a moment of pleasure and joy . Even though it could have a complex reading , you could feel that it ’s something that belongs to her . We had used that liveliness originally in the film , in the consequence when she looks up at the principal and they ’re tripping on mushrooms , and I loved the notion that it give us then . And so it occurred to us that it would be possible to bring it back there . The hands come in was really an idea that fare from my cinematographer , Ashley Connor , who I have an awing working relationship with . There was a moment where I did n’t completely empathize , but she was like , " rely me . " And then there was a moment where Kristine did n’t completely translate , and I was like , " Trust me . " And then there was a second where the editor did n’t entirely realise , and then we were all like , " Trust me . "
I like the idea that everybody who watches it is going to have different experience , different interrogation . There ’s some people who ’ve been really literal — they’ve been like , " I did n’t know it was a threesome . " It ’s fun to have all those interpretations , and , again , hearkening back to those films of the ' LXX . Obviously there ’s lots of awe-inspiring independent films made and lots of photographic film that step outside of this , but we ’re at a very literal minute in picture palace . That ’s one of the reasons I watchedThe Worst Person in the Worldthree times . Kristine and I were texting — we were like , " What up , bad Person in the existence ! " Because that present moment when it pace outdoors of literalism just , like , lit me up and remind me this is why I love movies . Not because they explained things perfectly , but because they confused me .
