Critical darlings at the Sundance Film Festival and winners of the Grand Jury Award at the Atlanta Film Festival for their first feature, “Greener Grass,” actors, writers, producers, and directors Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe are primed to break out in the industry in a grand fashion. The comedians, both alumna of the prestigious Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) Theatre, have redefined the suburban satire subgenre in an audacious, unique, and immoderately imaginative fashion.
On the cusp of the theatrical release of “Greener Grass,” I spoke with the budding filmmakers about their personal and creative inspirations for the story, utilizing their UCB background at the helm, hybridizing comedy and horror, and more.
You two have managed to create a suburban satire that boldly separates itself from the rest of the subgenre. How did you conceive of this unique concept?
DeBoer: Oh, what a nice compliment in that question. Thank you.
Luebbe: Perhaps you know that “Greener Grass” started out as a short film that Jocelyn and I made back in 2015. And that was the first thing we made together. We had known each other and worked together on a sketch team at the Upright Citizens Brigade for about four years before that. And one thing that Jocelyn and I were always drawn to and interested in exploring on that sketch group and then with the short film [was] the drama of domesticity and drama of the mundane. We both grew up as middle children in the midwestern suburbs. We really drew from similar backgrounds and points of inspiration in the short. With the feature, we really wanted to expand on that, and in particular, this theme of politeness taken to the extreme and also, identity and people seeking identity in their exterior and the environment around them rather than from [inside].
DeBoer: When we were writing and also, in the design phase and pre-production of the movie, we really didn’t reference other films about suburbia very often at all in terms of the kind of suburban satire film we were making. Dawn and I had both grown up seeing many. I wouldn’t say we’re exactly cinephiles of that genre, especially. And so that helped us not be too derivative that way.
And seeing as you’re performers as well, was it always your intention to star as well as write and direct this film?
DeBoer: It was. Dawn and I both were really mainly focused as actors and also sketch actors at our time coming up together in New York. And when we made “Greener Grass,” we had moved to LA, and we weren’t working a whole lot as actors. And we were really just trying to make something that we could act in with our core focus more than being like, “Look at us. We’re filmmakers.” But then it was really the experience of making “Greener Grass” that we discovered we’re even more interested in the filmmaking aspect of it than we are in just our characters, alone, etc. That’s really when we discovered we are control freaks and wanted to have our hands in every aspect of it.
Obviously, there’s an air of competition and passive aggression among the aforementioned ultra-politeness within the film. I thought of how I’d pitch this film to production executives. It’s “Keeping Up with the Joneses” times 100 with a misplaced sense of personal and social empathy.
DeBoer: Oh my god. I love that.
Luebbe: I love that.
DeBoer: I want to write that down. That’s perfect.
Luebbe: Can you write our specs from now on [laughter]?
DeBoer: Yes [laughter].
I’d be happy to!
As you mentioned, competition is a huge part of this story and a thing we were so excited to explore. Jill, Jocelyn’s character, is, in particular, so polite; the most polite person in the movie. And Lisa, my character, is so jealous of everything that Jill has and is also not quite as polite, deep down, and is able to really manipulate Jill and the other characters in their world to sort of get what she wants. Which ultimately, probably doesn’t translate to happiness for anyone. It was fun to explore.
You claim to not be experts in the genre. But I noticed shades of Tim Burton in your color and thematic palate, especially with the inclusion of magical realism. What are some of your filmmaking inspirations?
DeBoer: We both just love “Edward Scissorhands,” of course. He does such an incredible job in that movie of instantly dropping you into this heightened world that I feel like can help with magical realism a lot in terms of, “Strap in. You’re in this storybook world.” And his use of color and juxtaposition of darkness in that movie is definitely something that we were influenced by. And we’re just huge John Waters fans as well. The passion with which he depicts his specific Baltimore world or that sort of suburbia, we were so influenced by. Because of course, we’re telling stories influenced by our own upbringing. We both had happy childhoods and love and respect where we came from, in a lot of ways. And we wanted to make sure that, even though we were satirizing suburbia, it was from the inside. And I think John Waters is a great model for that.
Luebbe: And also, the absurdity in his films. I remember watching “Polyester,” where, towards the beginning, that woman in the choir robe, after she gets hit by a broom, knocked down by the teenagers, and then flattens their tire by biting into it. And I just remember seeing that moment and thinking, “Wow, movies can be like this?”
DeBoer: I love that you brought up “Polyester,” too, because one of the things I love about “Polyester” is how so much of the inspiration in that movie is from midcentury melodramas, which, very strangely, I grew up watching as a child with my grandmother’s VHS collection. But these Douglas Sirk, these kind of women weepy films, as they would call it, is definitely the style in which “Polyester” is done. And so it’s such a cool meld of worlds that we love. But we must say, too, that when we made the “Greener Grass” short, we were both watching “Twin Peaks” together at the time. And David Lynch, we, of course, adore and respect. “Blue Velvet,” “Mulholland Drive.”
Luis Buñuel, “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.” That has almost a sketch element in which you keep returning to the fact that they’re all trying to just have dinner together. “Brazil” is a favorite satire that is in this heightened world. If you look at any inch of any frame in that movie, something is going on, which was something we talked about in the production design of our movie. That we wanted there to be visual comedy all over the place.
Luebbe: Todd Solondz. In particular, “Welcome to the Dollhouse.” The darkness. The sheer, sheer darkness with which he depicted suburbia, and how uncomfortable you feel laughing during that movie is something I very much delighted in.
DeBoer: We want to make this film that is unique. We want it to be something that people have never seen before. But we also want it to be a movie a sixth-grader will love, and a 14-year-old in the midwest who hasn’t ever seen an art film can watch this and think it rocks and think it’s funny. It was important to us that we made it acceptable, in a way, just by the ways in which it’s different.
With your improv background, what skills may you have utilized and transferred over to take on the director’s chair?
DeBoer: Our years and years of performing live improv in front of packed houses in that dirty basement in New York are absolutely one of the most important ways in which we honed our skills and techniques to be able to write the way that we do. Dawn, wouldn’t you say that our background as improvisers shows up so much in the scriptwriting process? Because that’s what we’re doing with each other. Not that we’re getting up on our feet and taking a suggestion, but we’re absolutely coming up with a nugget of an idea, and then, together, expanding it, and heightening it, and isolating what’s funny about it and following that fun. On set, when you’re directing, especially comedy, you’re conducting the tension and release of a moment on feet. And you also have to know if your jokes are playing and if you’re delivering to the audience what you want.
There’s a difference working behind cameras. When you’re doing an improv show, and you’re trying out a joke, if doesn’t work, you can know immediately because it doesn’t hit with the audience. And then you can change your tactic and try again. And then if it hits, you know exactly the point they laughed at and then how to isolate and expand that moment. But when you’re behind camera, you don’t have the audience. In fact, everyone’s supposed to be quiet [laughter]. We have to use what’s in our bones of knowing where we think the audience will laugh and just our comedic instincts in that way.
Luebbe: We were excited to delve into, with “Greener Grasses,” these elements of horror. And we found so much that comedy and horror have this parallel in terms of, as Jocelyn was talking about, these moments of tension and release and pacing. And that was another element that we were excited to delve into.
You accomplish the hybridization of genres seamlessly.
Luebbe: It’s just such a fine line with horror, and comedy, and with our movie, of finding the moments where we actually wanted it to feel scary, or the audience to feel uncertain and nervous about what was happening, or what the POV was. And in being nervous about veering into camp and making fun of the serial killer. But there are moments where we do want to laugh at her. And just really maintaining that line of when it is scary and when it is funny, it’s such a delicate thing.
DeBoer: Some of the very best kinds of satire is couched in what seems like just pure comedy because that can sometimes be the way you can really get to people with a message that you’re actually interested in conveying. By having it seem on the surface like we’re just laughing, and then when you feel the teeth under that, that is some of the very coolest kind of satire.
Creatively, what’s next for you two?
Luebbe: We are in the process of writing our next feature, which we won’t give away much about. But I will say, like “Greener Grass,” it’s its own unique world, although that world, itself, is very different from the world of “Greener Grass.”
“Greener Grass” is in select theaters now.