What are some of the things that led you to make Funny Ha Ha?
To some extent I’ve learned how important performance is to me. You see this in so many student films where all kinds of attention is given to the things that are more or less within one’s control. And the things that are more ineffable, such as performance, it’s hard to know what to do with them. You have these films that may or may not be lit nicely, but there’s no heart to them. That was my paramount goal with the film, getting the performances to feel organic. And to that end I ended up casting non-actors, because I realized that I knew better how to work with non-actors, how to work with people purely on a rapport basis as opposed to via craft. I haven’t particularly learned the craft of directing professional actors. Q: How do you find people to play these roles? Well, they’re old friends, and some of them are new friends, people that I’m lucky enough to come across at the right moment. You meet someone, and you have a sense of them and what it looks like when they walk into a ro
