Interview: Barbara Stepansky (2013 Nicholl Winner, 2013 Black List) — Part 4

Barbara Stepansky’s original screenplay “Sugar in My Veins” not only won the filmmaker a 2013 Nicholl fellowship, it also landed on the 2013 Black List, so I was excited when she agreed to do an interview to see what we could learn from this talented young filmmaker.

Today in Part 4, Barbara elaborates on some of the key themes and moments in the script “Sugar in My Veins”:

Scott: Several of the characters in this story have some sort of physical injury or debilitation. Ray suffered these back injuries related to this daring physical risk he took when he was younger. Charlotte’s got dementia. Jillian has an artificial body of her own doing. I’m curious, were these physical issues for you of these characters symbolic in a way of the kind of broken psychological nature of the characters?

Barbara: Oh, yeah! Absolutely! I had this notion that these people should be both broken in a way. They’re like broken toys. It makes them understand each other better and they had something to bond over.

The mind-body experience is really interesting to me, and I like to play with it. What does that mean if you disregard yourself so much that you’d poke your eye out? That your spiritual well-being, i.e. being able to play music or experience an adrenaline rush, is more important than your body to you? I’m not sure I’ve figured it out yet, but it still interests me.

Scott: There’s several interesting themes in the story. One of the most obvious ones right in the title is “Sugar.” The very first thing that Jillian eats a lot in her young life, I think she’s like three or something, is a packet of sugar. She pours several packets of sugar into her milk and other drinks. Ray drinks a lot of sugar. In fact, he even called her “Sugar.” What’s going on thematically for you with regards to this idea of sugar?

Barbara: The sugar was always an element from the start. They just both liked to drink a lot of sugar. I thought that was a cute kind of a connection point and it allows us to get into their belief systems a little.

Sugar is terribly bad for you. It’s like their relationship, an obsession, almost like a drug addiction. They’re both playing with fire from the get-go, even though at first it’s just sugar. I have a lot of discussions with people about sugar, and how we should all stop consuming it altogether. I completely agree but it fit so well, I couldn’t leave it out.

Scott: Interesting. Then there’s the composer Mahler. Ray introduces Jillian to his music. He suggests that “Mahler is the musical equivalent of living in the moment.” Then Mahler becomes kind of an obsession to Jillian in a way. Why Mahler, and what were you going for in terms of choosing him as a point of connection?

Barbara: Well, at first I was just looking for a festival that actually exists, and found Mahlerfest in Boulder. It just was a perfect fit for me in all respects. Boulder is a mid-size college town that has everything I wanted for my these characters, politically and educationally. And of course Mahlerfest every year in May.

I needed to research on Mahler, and so I found out about his heart condition and about what people were saying about his music. I thought that all that fit perfectly what I was going for and what my characters were going through.

Scott: A nice bit of synchronicity?

Barbara: Yes.

Scott: As Julie gets closer to Ray, she makes this really pointed confession. Talking about her violin, she says, “When I play, I get to forget about me, who I am, where I’m from. That’s all I ever wanted. I just disappear, and then I hate myself a little bit less.” Her desire to disappear, that seems pretty apparent because she’s so different from her peers, and discovers early on that her peers don’t really like her because she doesn’t fit in. But a sense of self-hatred emerges, too. Where did that come from?

Barbara: This came from the experience that if nobody cares about you or nobody loves you for who you are, you fade away a little bit. Loneliness is a big factor in Jillian’s life, and loneliness can cause some of the biggest psychosis and psychological breakdowns that I’ve ever seen, once you dig around. Loneliness is a bit of a killer.

Jillian is a very lonely character at the beginning. She doesn’t think she’s lovable and she doesn’t think that anybody will ever understand her, so she begins to hate herself as a result.

Scott: You mentioned that the material was quote “challenging,” in part because the character has these negative feelings toward herself, but also this forbidden love dynamic that you’re talking about. She’s only 14 and she ends up having a sexual relationship with Ray who’s precisely twice her age. I know you talk about Nabokov and that being an influence. How did you put yourself in the mindset of a 14-year-old girl and a 28-year-old guy as they conducted that affair?

Barbara: This is hard [laughs]. It’s hard. It’s my job to make sure that everything tracks emotionally from each perspective. You do the pass where I say, I’m just going to focus on the girl. When you’re seeing everything through her eyes, you will know if everything is sound in every scene. And you start to really understand what the character wants.

Then you do the pass where you just focus on the guy. You ask yourself, I have a girl that’s really pushing for this relationship to happen. How am I going to react as a 28-year-old guy if this happens to me? I need to push her away and it needs to feel emotionally right.

What happens is this interesting push and pull that you’re creating within yourself. It’s hard. I hope that response explains it a little bit.

Scott: That speaks to the challenging nature of the material.

Barbara: Yeah, and it’s so easy to fall into flirtation. When we’re just writing romantic material, you can do the standard banter. There was so much I had to pull back on, because he was coming off as a pedophile right away. [laughs] There were many times where I had to concede he can’t say this. Or he would never say this, even though I’d want him to. That’s not him. That’s the writer. What the writer wants doesn’t matter. It’s what the character wants.

Scott: One of the most evocative moments of the script is a very cinematic one, where Jillian’s on stage performing Mahler And Ray, who works at the concert hall, he’s managing the lights that are trained on her.

It’s almost a magical moment in a way, this sense of connection though they’re separated by this distance. How did that come about?

Barbara: That scene always existed. It was always a deciding moment for Ray through completely nonverbal communication. Especially with music, there’s something so visceral about that performance that it pulls you in.

I really wanted to capture that. In the scene before Olsen tells her to find something to say. So she does. She wants to say that she loves him, that’s the intention. It becomes very clear to him without them having to talk about it. At that point Ray gives up, which I always thought was just such a poignant moment for him.

Scott: It’s almost like cinematic foreplay.

Barbara: Yeah, absolutely. That’s putting it very well.

Tomorrow in Part 5, we wrap up the discussion of “Sugar in My Veins,” then Barbara shares her thoughts on some key aspects of the craft of screenwriting.

For Part 1, go here.

Part 2, go here.

Part 3, go here.

Please stop by comments to thank Barbara for taking the time for the interview and post any follow-up questions you may have.

Barbara is repped by ICM Partners and Hertzberg Media.

Comment Archive