Interview (Part 3): Spencer Harvey and Lloyd Harvey (2016 Nicholl Winners)

My conversation with the brother and sister writing duo from Australia.

Spencer and Lloyd Harvey wrote the original screenplay “Photo Booth” which won a 2016 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently I had the opportunity to chat with the pair about their background as writers and filmmaker, and their award-winning screenplay.

Today in Part 3, Spencer and Lloyd talk about the importance of art in the script and the value of placing a big coincidence early in the story:

Scott: Early on, Jean’s voice is recorded saying this: “Just before my eighth birthday, I read in a book that indigenous elders believed that when their photo was taken, it took with it a piece of their soul.”

I should say that they had the one day that they would spend with Eileen was her birthday, and they would go and get a picture taken in those little photo booths.

Jean says in this voiceover, “After that, I dreaded my birthday and the one day that I’d spend with my mother. I hated smiling just right, dressing just so, and sitting still at the right moment for that a flash to come and suck a piece of my soul away.”

What was the inspiration for that photo booth thing? How did that emerge as a thematic touchstone for the story?

Lloyd: It’s a big part of it.

Spencer: Yeah, it’s definitely the keystone. The artwork was born out of that story. It wasn’t the other way around. Eileen, apart from Jean, was one of our very first characters. We had this beautiful painting of a woman that we found in…

Lloyd: It was one of the original stimulus images we used.

Spencer: It was of a woman on profile. There was just something very interesting and captivating about her.

Lloyd: She’s an interesting, working‑class woman with a very interesting face. Not the type of face you would traditionally paint if you were to talk in terms of classical portraiture.

Spencer: Yeah, it felt very incidental. It felt like she was getting her photo taken in a photo booth, from the side anyway. That was a big inspiration for us, this particular painting, this Eileen woman, and this idea that these two would go get their photograph taken in a photo booth together to record almost a false memory of happiness and togetherness.

This idea inspired the artwork. We wanted the artwork to reflect this relationship, because that was the foundation of the problem, I suppose, that Jean needed to confront in herself. A lot of this drama around the story occurs around this photo booth artwork.

Scott: I was thinking about that because there’s a series of performance art pieces. I want to talk to you about those later on, but the one, the photo booth, does seem to be the one most specifically tied to Eileen, literally, historically, because of these birthday events.

She would on the one hand say, “I hated this,” and this idea that “a little piece of my soul would get sucked away whenever these photographs get taken,” and yet she got this performance art piece where she’s still and invites these strangers to come and take photographs of her, one after one after another.

I was thinking, OK. What’s the motivation there? If she dreads the whole photo booth thing, why does she do this? Is it to overcome that dread? Is it to defy her mother? Is it inviting strangers to photograph her?

Is she both revealing something about herself or also, at the same time looking for something within herself, or all of the above? What’s your take on why she, Jean, does that particular performance art piece?

Spencer: This comes down to the theme of legacy and this question of what makes our life worth something. For her, giving away a piece of her soul to these people, this idea of giving herself away in her art, was the way in which she posed this question, “What was she worth?”

Lloyd: Do all these pieces matter?

Spencer: Yes. She gave away parts of herself. Was it for a purpose? When we give of ourselves, are we in some way imparting something good or making an impact on others in a way that gives our lives some sort of meaning? For us, I think the Photo Booth in particular, was…I don’t want to say therapeutic, but what’s the word for it?

All of her art in some way deals with her past or her relationships, and they’re a way in which she explores or navigates her own experience of the world.

Lloyd: Yes. She does that through endurance. That’s a big part of her work as a whole. All of her works are endurance performance. It’s about her having to sit through something or having to endure something in one way or another.

Spencer: I guess in that way she has to confront that pain.

Lloyd: Yes.

Spencer: In a lot of ways I think…

Lloyd: She forces herself to see the truth of it.

Scott: I picked up something that’s probably along the lines of what you’re saying. It struck me, because I know you said that basically all of the performance art pieces are tied to her experiences with her mother, not just the photo booth.

I was wondering whether that photo booth experience…You said it. It’s like a performance. It’s like she had to put on a smile for her mom. Then all of these art pieces in a way, either consciously or unconsciously are somehow recreating something similar. It’s like an echo, if you will, from the past. Is that fair to say?

Lloyd: 100 percent, yeah.

Spencer: That’s better than the way we said it.

Lloyd: Yeah. Use that. That’s good.

Scott: Let’s talk about Ben, who’s Jean’s husband, who himself is an artist, but a very different kind and at a different station in terms of the way that he’s perceived amongst the art culture. How would you describe his character?

Lloyd: Ben is interesting. Ben is beautifully flawed as a man.

Spencer: He comes from a family or from a father who is the epitome of success. His father is a very successful landscape painter and Ben’s gone and married a woman who also is, or who has become a great success. He is a man dwarfed by…

Lloyd: He’s a thorn between these two roses in a sense.

Spencer: He’s dwarfed by these great, successful people and he can’t quite measure up to that.

Scott: Yes, and that’s quite a shadow. We should talk about his father. You really can’t understand Ben unless you place him in the context of both of his parents. Susan, his mom, who you describe in one interaction as “waspish and curt,” which really pretty much gets at the core of her character.

Jeffrey, this famous landscape artist…Ben makes this decision not to paint landscapes, but to paint portraits. He even specifically talks about this at some point, that he’s made this pivot, I would think, to try and get out from under the shadow of his father.

Yet, isn’t it true that he’s still tethered to him? If he’s chosen to do portraits, that’s in response to his father doing landscapes, so he’s not really free of his father’s fame at all, is he?

Spencer: No, and he never will be. I think that’s his hamster wheel.

Lloyd: Yeah. He’s stuck.

Scott: Then there’s Millie, who really, of the triangle between Jean and Ben, she’s the third part of that. A young woman with whom Ben says to have had a one‑night affair. Now she’s pregnant, as it turns out, with Ben’s child. How would you describe what’s going on with Millie in the story?

Lloyd: When we first meet Millie, she’s at the end of her rope. I guess financially and emotionally, she’s in a very complicated relationship with her family.

Spencer: Particularly her mother.

Lloyd: Particularly her mother. All of which we don’t find out until her story unravels a little bit more. We’re very much meeting a woman at rock bottom, who in that moment discovers she’s also pregnant.

Right from the beginning, she’s in a state of reaction to all of this. I guess that spurs her into this situation with Ben and Jean, and her options become a little bit slim to a certain degree. When they make an agreement or arrangement, I guess from her point of view, it seems a lot better than her alternatives.

Scott: Yeah. By the end of what we refer to as Act One… in Hollywood, somewhere along the line, I learned this thing ‑‑ I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but I’ve always acted on it ‑‑ that you’re allowed one coincidence per story. Anything more of that smacks of writer’s convenience. If you’re going to do a coincidence, make it a good one.

You’ve got a good one, which is that Ben and Jean have got a woman who’s going to give up her baby. That’s when we start the movie. They’ve already made this arrangement. They’re going to adopt this baby. Then she backs out.

Just around the same time, Millie gets in touch with Ben and says, “I’m pregnant.” That’s the coincidence. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just like if you’re going to do it, do it big.

Spencer: Do it upfront. [laughs]

Tomorrow in Part 4, we continue our exploration of the duo’s Nicholl winning script “Photo Booth”.

For Part 1, go here.

Part 2, here.

Spencer and Lloyd are repped by UTA and The Gotham Group.

Twitter: @SpencerandLloyd.