Writer/director/actress Katie Aselton's infidelity drama the freebie got some very positive records along the festival circuit over the last year and will be hitting DVD this week via.
The movie stars Ms. Aselton, of The Puffy Chair and FX's fantasy football comedy, The League alongside Dax Shepard (Jackass, NBC's Parenthood) as a married couple sensing a waning of their intimacy. They strike on an idea: to spice up their marriage they'll each get one night of infidelity - a freebie - free consequences. From this premise comes a fairly trenchant couples drama about the type of "honesty" among modern uneasy at times acts as a license to be cruel or hurtful.
Ms. Aselton was kind enough to talk to about the rocky road to intimacy Twitch in modern relationships, collaborating with co-star Dax Shepard, and the state of modern romance on film.
Twitch: What's the response to the film been like?
KA: It has been rather pleasant, I have to say. I've been really surprised and the film was super well-received at Sundance. And you know, it's a small movie, it had a very small life theatrically but I feel like the people who did get to see it responded positively, which is everything you could possibly want really.
Twitch: How did you prepare with co-star Dax Shepard in order to create that sense of intimacy your characters share?
KA: UM, it's funny you should ask. Not much at all, really. Dax actually signed onto the project the night before we started shooting.
Twitch: Oh wow.
KA: I know, isn't that crazy? We had another actor attached. He had been attached for a couple of months and we had done a ton of area, and talking and backstory work. And as soon as we started shooting it just wasn't working.
What I was really hoping to have and I what I feel, and felt [that] a film like The Freebie really needed is that sense of intimacy between these characters. I felt like we had to believe that they loved each other, and had this great chemistry and this great bond that could elevate them above other couples in their minds. And shooting with this other actor it just wasn't there. And you can't fake that, you know? So when you're working on a super low-budget film, you not only want to get what you're looking for, obviously, but you want to be having a good time, everyone enjoying themselves and feeling fulfilled.
He wasn't happy and we Katherine ain't happy, so we parted ways and in a panic all looked at each other. And someone said, "what about Dax shephard?" "Doesn't someone here know him?" And my husband [Writer/director and The League co-star, Mark Duplass] had taken a meeting with him in the year prior to making this movie. [He] called him up and said, "my wife is making this movie do you want to do it?" And Dax said "yep." "No problem - I'll show up tomorrow." And so I met him three hours before we shot the dinner party [the first scene in the film].
When you're working with someone who's incredibly open and honest and available, all that stuff just comes very naturally. Working with Dax was wonderful.
Twitch: I picked up on something interesting you said there: the idea that Annie and Darren think that they're somehow elevated above the other couples that they know. Was the intent that these were two people with a little extra ego to them?
KA: Oh absolutely! This couple thought that they were above and beyond normal, common relationship rules. And you know, I'm not saying – this certainly is not a morality judgment in any way. This could work for some couples. I wanted to play with the idea of this one couple who had it all blow up in their face. Because they felt like they were the evolved torque and because they were the couple that was so much better than every other couple at the table, because they're the couple who would rise above it.
Twitch: Do you feel like that's a common trap for couples today?
KA: I do. I think we're in a generation of therapy over'd people who read a lot of self-help books and are so in touch with their feelings that they talk everything to death, to the point of actually really hurting themselves and hurting their relationships. I think certainly there's a level of knowledge of self that's necessary to walk through this world and survive, but I do believe that there's a line that you can cross where you can go so far that you get into this delusional state of your life and the way you're living it.
Twitch: To your mind, is there a "right" way for couples to work together?
KA: I don't think that there is a "right" relationship. I think relationships are messy and I think that you strive to be as good of a partner as you possibly can be, but you will inevitably makes mistakes and you will inevitably hurt each other. But I think if the bottom line is love - and I believe Annie and Darren, they're bottom line was love, their motivation for doing this was because they wanted to get back to the couple that they were. It was a stupid way of going about doing it, and it ended up not working the way they hoped it would work, but their ultimate motivation for doing it was to save their [relationship].
You know, a good relationship - I don't think there's a perfect relationship - a good relationship is based in truth and honesty. I don't think Annie and Darren were as particularly honest as they thought they were with each other. That's sort of what they would pat themselves on the backs for, but ultimately, what they had to do was talk about the real problem that they had was that they lost the level of intimacy that they once had. That was their problem, and that's what they really didn't want to talk about.
I think a good relationship has humor and love, and you have to allow your partner to make mistakes as well. But I don't think there's a perfect relationship.
Twitch: We're kind of a trick spot with films about romance and dramas about relationships. What do you think is working out there and what do you think is lacking?
KA: I think it's tough. Because I think I have a lot of the "average movie viewer" in me, where a lot of the time when I go to the movies, I want to escape my reality, and be swept away. So I believe that a huge part of the business of movies is to provide something like that. So you've got the Katherine Heigl, and you've got these movies that - there's not a shred of reality in them. That's not my life, anyway, I don' t know if it's someone else's life. But I certainly don't relate directly to those characters.
What I feel like I wanted to do with The Freebie was just spread some human truth there and throw light on this relationship I do actually relate to. This couple, Annie and Darren, could have been any couple sitting around my dinner table. I feel like because it didn't work out perfectly for them and because it wasn't tied up in a bow it was sort of the anti-Hollywood movie in that way.
But I understand why they make those movies and I understand why there are Hollywood endings: because it makes people happy.
Twitch: Can you tell us a little bit about what you have coming up next?
KA: I am toying with the idea of going in a completely different direction and going with something in the thriller genre - something gory and bloody, and beautiful.
Twitch: Anything else you'd like to say to our readers?
KA: Go see this movie. Rent it. Buy it.
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