‘Soft Liquid Center’ Filmmakers On Improvising An Entire Script
Mary Beth McAndrews
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Soft Liquid Center is one of those festival finds that buries its way into the fleshy folds of your brain and makes itself comfortable. It’s a film that haunted me due to how it approaches the subject of surviving spousal abuse through a caring yet terrifying lens. And that’s thanks to the work by co-directors Joseph Kolean and Zachary Guttierez, who co-wrote the film with star Steph Holmbo. Her voice is the one that shines throughout Soft Liquid Center, not just through dialogue, but through the lived experiences she imbues throughout the script (or lack thereof).
Read the full synopsis below:
Steph, a newly single woman on the cusp of a better life, finds herself in a dangerous and peculiar situation not of her making. As she begins to unravel the mysteries of her predicament, she grapples with a controlling, manipulative force hellbent on her undoing in this unique and unorthodox tale of loneliness, haunting, and abuse.
Dread Central spoke with Steph Holmbo, Joseph Kolean, and Zach Guttierez about how to tell a story like this, having a three-person crew, working with an outline instead of a script, and more.
Dread Central: Soft Liquid Center has been on the festival circuit for a good part of the year. It’s finally coming out. How does it feel to finally have this piece of art kind of out into the world?
Steph Holmbo: It feels really good. It was a true labor of love. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into the initial seed, the continued writing, the actual filming of things, then the editing, then the festival circuit, then the marketing. I mean, we’re basically a three/four person team that does everything from the food for craft services to the cinematographers, one of which is sitting here. So we played every role and it feels really exciting to feel that final stage of giving it over to people rather than continuing to hone and craft. Now it’s like that full release. I mean, it’s funny that they say movies get released and that is exactly how it feels.
Joseph Kolean: Yeah, I’ll just echo that. I think there’s a little bit of nerves around, I hate to say this, but it’s much more likely that any movie that doesn’t have a bunch of backing just kind of gets lost. But if people do discover it, it is a little nerve-wracking to think about what are people going to think about this. Do they want to run you out of town, or do they embrace it or is it divisive? I tend not to ever think of that stuff until I have something to share and then I’m like, “Oh, people might hate this.” So there’s a little bit of nerves. But I’m mostly just, I think, thrilled to share it with people. Even people who don’t like this movie or anything that we make, I’m still curious about that.
I think the worst possible reaction is just the shoulder shrug. I’d rather have somebody really despise something and have a bunch of interesting reasons for that than just not care.
Also, just to clarify, for most of the movie, it was Steph, Zach, and I. Zach and I handled things that we shouldn’t have been handling, like sound and set deck and stuff and costumes. But occasionally we would have friends hop on and help. But most of the time it was three of us. And then I think we had two or three shoots where we had five or six people.
SH: And now we have an executive producer!
JK: Yeah, Carl. He’s our EP. He hopped on in the backend.
DC: So I know that the three of you wrote this together. But I would love to hear how the seed of this started and how the script started. Steph, I know that this is based on some personal experiences you had, correct?
SH: Yeah. It’s based on an amalgamation of several different relationships I’ve had. Romantic, friendship, familial, some authority figures in my life, all male, all relationships with men. And Joe and I were talking about how to take those kinds of traumatic experiences and make them into art. I am a big horror fan, but I’m a new horror fan. Joe has taught me a lot about things and showed me a lot of movies, and we settled upon that genre pretty quickly. One of the biggest issues I see societally is this idea of believing women when they talk about their own abuse, when they talk about their experience, especially with charismatic men who don’t hurt everyone. They just hurt some.
So we started pretty early on talking about how we were going to add in the supernatural aspect. Then there was no questioning if somebody was being cruel or not because we were bringing in some heightened elements where you can’t second guess if the watermelon is moving. You can’t second guess if she is transported to a different place. So we decided to heighten those things to make it really clear that this was happening to her and where that kind of journey led.
DC: As someone who has used her own experiences in filmmaking, it’s fucking hard to put yourself out there like that. And even if it’s not your story specifically, I know it can be so difficult to bear yourself so emotionally. Steph, you’re both a writer and you’re in front of the camera for most of Soft Liquid Center. Did it feel cathartic at all? What was that like for you in multiple roles, confronting these experiences you’ve had in your life?
SH: Cathartic, challenging, relieving, all of those things? I knew pretty early that both Zach and Joe were going to direct it, and I really trust them. I really trust them, not only as my friends, but with this story and how they interact in the world with me and with other women. We had several conversations about how two white men are directing this story about a woman’s experience. I don’t think I could have told this story in any way without people I trusted so deeply.
But there were moments where I wouldn’t often get into the kind of mind fuckery until we were shooting because I would be so much in the writer’s seat or the producer’s seat or the organizational seat. Then suddenly we would be shooting and that kind of force would hit me. I mean, what artists say is to use it. So some of it worked really well in the movie.
There’s also a lot of different dynamics. Joe and I are married. Zach, we’ve been friends with for a long time. So there were some shoots where I should have stayed in the actor role, and instead, I would become emotional. I would ask some questions that weren’t really necessary at that moment. And I have since apologized, and we’ve talked about all of those interactions. I think some of it comes from how personal the story was and the discomfort and trauma coming out in ways that I really didn’t expect.
DC: Isn’t that fun when trauma just decides to manifest in ways you’ve never dealt with before? I deeply understand that for sure. But Joe, a similar question, but frankly, what does that responsibility feel like as a director in telling this story? And I know that you did it with Zach, but I’m curious, just knowing that you two are also married, what was that feeling like for you as director, producer, everything taking on this project?
JK: It’s hard. There’s a lot of conversation about who gets to tell which stories. And I think we should be having those conversations. That was something that Zach and I talked about with Steph because Soft Liquid Center is her story more than anyone else’s. Some of the experiences with men we were tapping into, one in particular was someone that we had dealt with that we thought was our friend. So I was kind of collateral damage in the experience of this abusive guy who was a friend, not a boyfriend or anything.
But many of the things that Steph was tapping into were before I knew her. So there’s an immense responsibility to just be thoughtful and careful. Even just answering the question, I still question whether Zach and I are the right people to direct this movie because I just wonder what it would’ve been. Obviously very different if Steph was directing, starring, producing, and writing.
I guess to tie a messy little bow on this, we just try to be as careful as possible and just be in constant communication with Steph. So when Steph says, “Oh, I had to apologize”, I don’t remember those things because since she was also a producer, she kind of sometimes does have to crack the whip and be like, “You guys got to fucking figure this out.” That’s a tricky thing to be the star and the writer and the producer.
So I never felt like she overstepped her bounds or anything. She’s just trying to keep a couple of wacky guys in line. But in terms of the story itself, I think it’s really hard and I still wrestle with whether Zach or myself are the right people to direct this type of story. Would it be better if we just help produce or support in some way? I wish I had a more clear answer for you,
DC: But I think that is an interesting point to bring up. There are a lot of discussions about who is telling whose stories and how are they telling them. As someone with experience with sexual assault and abusive relationships, I’ve done a lot of thinking, too, about who should tell the stories, and I don’t think there is a good answer. This is getting deep, I apologize. But like you said, Steph, you trusted them and I think because it’s essentially your story, and if you felt like they could do it justice, then who is anyone else to say that anyone else could have directed it? And it is so complicated, but I think y’all handled it great and Steph was there to help and lead the way. But I also think it is admirable to be able to have a conversation and address that within yourself. I don’t think a lot of filmmakers do have those conversations with themselves. So it’s refreshing to also hear about grappling with responsibility in your place to tell stories like this.
SH: I just think there’s an aspect of not only who’s telling the story, but who the storyteller wants to be in those roles. I not only trust Joe and Zach as my friends, but I have seen a lot of their work. Not only would I want to take aspects of my story and tell them with people whom I love and trust, but I also wanted this told in an interesting and beautiful and spooky and tension-filled way. If they would’ve been strangers, this would not have worked, but they’re not strangers. And yeah, I think it is interesting to add the perspective of the two of them where the villain is somebody who could look like them.
JK: We made Soft Liquid Center for nothing. That wasn’t really a possibility in the 80s or 90s, and especially before that. So I just wonder now that it’s easier, not easier to make the movies, but cheaper to make the movies if that will open up a door for more people to tell stories from different backgrounds. And so then sometimes I wonder, should I even direct? I’m not trying to punish myself, but I sometimes wonder if I should, as much as I like directing, switch to a role that helps other people with stories from backgrounds that we don’t usually hear from tell their stories.
I don’t know, I hate to make it like a morality thing, but what’s the right thing to do when you come from a place of privilege? I don’t come from a lot of money, but just being a white, heterosexual male has a different cachet than anyone else in the last however many a thousand years or whatever. So would it be better for me to use that power to help people who don’t? So it’s just a question I’m trying to be open to.
I’m not trying to be like, “Oh, I’m just suffering so much thinking about I don’t have any burden.” I mean, I have it the easiest of anybody. I just do wonder what my responsibility is, I guess. And I think telling this story has made me wonder that more than if I would’ve just told a story like my own. I never thought about this stuff with the other short films I’ve done where I just wrote it from my perspective. So I think in a delightful way, Soft Liquid Center has disrupted the way that I think about how movies get made.
DC: Zach, what about you?
Zachary Gutierrez: I think it comes from a lot of trust. Steph and I were friends before we started this movie, but we weren’t necessarily really close friends. So it was nice that she gave me a certain amount of trust, and I also gave her a certain amount of trust being the sole focus of the movie. We obviously became very good friends over the course of the three years. In terms of directing, you’re always trusting your actors. I think always deferring to Steph on set because obviously this is based on her experiences. A lot of Soft Liquid Center is improvised.
DC: I didn’t know that.
ZG: So I don’t know what Joe’s trying to share or not share, but basically we made this movie off of a one-page outline. It just had the plot points.
So a lot of it was just we’d go shoot something and then we’d edit that together and be like, “OK, I think that works”, and then shoot the next scene. It was very much sort of piecing it together as we went. Obviously, we had an overarching idea and we knew where we wanted to get to, but we weren’t always sure what the best way was to get there. So we trusted Steph’s reactions and usually, that would be a little bit more muted than my reaction.
There were times when I was like, “Joe, we need Steph to throw her glass across the room in this scene.” I’d be so frustrated that this would be happening, and then we talked to Steph, and she’d be like, “No, that’s not what I do. That’s not how I would react in this situation.” So I think it all comes back to trust in that way.
DC: So on top of just having no money, you also had no script and wre improvising. I mean, come on.
ZG: It’s hard. In terms of the script thing, I make very different types of films with another co-director. We make very small relationship movies, and that’s also how we do it. We do it in a little different way in that we have a script, but we’re really precious about it. So I think if we were to do it again, I’d probably do it in that way where we have a little bit more of a roadmap that might cut a couple of months off the three years. But I wouldn’t change anything now that we have the finished product.
JK: So Zach and I had been trying to write a horror film for a little bit, a feature film, and we had two different ideas. We started writing one, and then we were like, “Ah, we’ll have to raise money. So if we want to shoot it now, we need to really pare it down.” But we didn’t know how to pare it down. Then we did that again, and we still felt like it was smaller, but still not small enough.
So then I said, “What if we bring on Steph as a writer? What if we talk to Steph and see if she wants to do something?” And [Zach] was like, “Yeah, I mean, see if she’s interested.” So then I went to Steph and that’s when we started talking about what she described. As long as she was comfortable with that, and since she was, we basically designed it to be a one-person movie with a few other characters who come in occasionally so that it would cost nothing. And we designed it to shoot predominantly in the place we live, so we didn’t have to go out and find a ton of locations.
DC: That was your house?
SH: That’s our house and our bathtub.
DC: Talk about bringing your work home with you. Good lord.
SH: Our neighbor came over for dinner and she had come to the screening. She walked in and she was like, “I feel afraid of this house.” And I was like, “You could live here.”
JK: She was like, “Is something bad going to happen to me here?” Yeah, it was weird. We didn’t think it would take three years. So it was weird, basically having our house constantly set decorated. We’d move a couple of things around, but we had to remember where everything was for three years.
DC: Continuity is my worst enemy.
SH: We lived with that little TV just on our counter for three years, and people would come over and be like, “Why do you have this?” And we’d be like, “Don’t touch it.”
JK: But yeah, the reason we worked from an outline was because I thought I’d discovered some cheat code to filmmaking. If we work from an outline, we can make lateral movements so much easier and it’ll just be so much easier than a script. And at least for me, it made it much, much harder because it was constantly evolving. We’d realized, “Oh, but we shot it this way even though in the outline, it’s this way.” And so then we’d have to come up with something else. So we kept having to connect the dots. It was doing a puzzle in the dark.
The way we made Soft Liquid Center operates a lot like the movie, which is a kind of dream logic. I think dream logic can be really nice when you’re watching a movie. It was not my favorite way to execute a movie. But in the moment, I thought we’d stumbled on something brilliant by just working from an outline, and I did not end up feeling that way after we completed it.
DC: I know that Soft Liquid Center is a disruption in a lot of ways in terms of form and subject matter. How has that translated to audience reaction? Has it felt like there’s a gender divide in the reactions to this movie so far?
SH: I think almost every woman, at least who I’ve talked to after they’ve seen it, has experienced an aspect of the movie, maybe several of them. But a lot of them have experienced things like this in one or more of their relationships, which I think is really telling of where we are in society. Also, to sidestep the question really fast before I go back to it, that was one of the main reasons I felt like horror was the right genre. We talked about horror being the genre, because I think it is often the back door into some of these social issues. People are just watching a movie and then suddenly they’re, I don’t know, learning something or hit over the head with something that they don’t even realize they’re being hit over the head with.
So I find women have at least experienced one thing in one relationship. I’ve had some conversations or overheard some conversations of men being like, “I don’t really get it. I didn’t see how totally he was a bad guy.” And that’s a little bit of an exaggeration because these people are not people I know. But I do think we market this as a show, don’t tell movie. And I think that that is really intentional. We’re not trying to show explicit abuse. We’re not trying to show what happened before this new phase of her life.
DC: Before we wrap up, Steph, I want to ask you, you are now more educated slash know about the world of horror. What is your current favorite horror movie now that you are more indoctrinated into the genre?
SH: Well, the last one I saw that I loved was Barbarian. I loved it, especially around the conversation we’re having with women knowing what to do, women having the answer and not being listened to, and not showing explicit violence or assault for us to understand something for unexpected twists and turns for creeps in movies. I loved a lot of things about that movie. It was really surprising to me. And I thought the star Georgina Campbell was incredible.
Soft Liquid Center is out now on digital and VOD.
Categorized:Interviews
