Interview (5 Part Series): Julia Hart and Jordan Horowitz (“Miss Stevens”)

Entertainment Weekly calls it a “breezy indie gem”. Bilge Ebiri of the Village Voice calls it a “tight, unnerving and deceptively complex movie”. David Ehrlich of Indiwire writes, “With her directorial debut, The Keeping Room screenwriter Julia Hart proves that she belongs behind the camera.” And the New York Times has named it a Critics Pick.

It is the movie Miss Stevens and it debuted in select theaters last weekend in LA and NY, then on video on demand (VOD) beginning today.

For those of you starved for strong adult movies, I highly recommend Miss Stevens. It is a pitch perfect film… authentic… human… and entertaining.

Recently I had an hour-long conversation with the movie’s writer-director Julia Hart and writer-producer Jordan Horowitz.

Jordan Horowitz and Julia Hart

Here is my 5 part interview with Julia and Jordan.

Part 1: “A real teacher is any of those things, all at once, on a daily basis. I wanted to show a real female teacher who was complex, sometimes brilliant, and sometimes a disaster.”

Part 2: “I’m surprised more films don’t just do that, because to me it’s the most surprising sometimes to just have your character do what a human would actually do in that moment instead of what they would do in a movie. Just have them be a human instead of a character.”

Part 3: “We’ve gone so far in terms of shock value that it seems like there’s nothing left. We’re numb. So we decided to do the opposite, that somehow doing the thing that isn’t shocking can be the most shocking thing of all.”

Part 4: “It’s so odd that I ever even thought when I was on set that I knew what the whole movie was, because you can’t possibly know when you’re shooting different pieces from different parts of the movie on different days.”

Part 5: “As long as there are passionate artists and good producers and people out there that want to tell original cinematic stories — or even not original stories — I don’t think movies are going anywhere.”

Twitter: @juliahartowitz, @jehorowitz.