Karyn Kusama Directs Jennifer's Body

by Elissa Suh | Published September 17, 2009

A few years back, writer-director Karyn Kusama made her debut with the independent feature about a female boxer. Girlfight went on to win the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance (tying with Kenneth Lonergan’s You Can Count on Me), as well as earning Kusama the Directing Award. Her next feature, Æon Flux, was a sci-fi thriller starring Charlize Theron. Most recently, Kusama directed Jennifer’s Body, which also centers on female protagonists. Written by Oscar winner Diablo Cody, Jennifer’s Body is the partially horrifying, partially comical, thoroughly original tale of a possessed teenage girl who kills her classmates. Even with just three features under her belt, Kusama has drawn from varied experiences, providing her with insight on the moviemaking process— which is why we asked her to talk with us about childhood nostalgia, her experience in the industry and some future projects.

Elissa Suh (MM): It has been a while since you directed your last feature, the sci-fi thriller Æon Flux. What have you been up to since then? How did you end up directing Jennifer’s Body?

Karyn Kusama (KK): Well let’s see, after Æon Flux, I directed an episode of television, I got married, I had a baby who is now two-and-a-half. I think I was just developing some other projects and looking to figure out what I could do next.

I was ideally searching for a smaller movie than Æon Flux because the size of that movie combined with the administrative chaos at Paramount at the time made it impossible to feel like I could make a good movie or a movie that I was happy with, so I was definitely looking to do something that felt more like my own somehow—that I’d have a little bit more control or voice in.

So as I was looking at scripts, I wasn’t finding that project. I was focusing on my own things and then Diablo’s script came along for Jennifer’s Body and I was just really struck by it. I felt really close to the characters, I felt like I understood them, I felt like it activated a love I have for genre that felt really fresh and unique. It didn’t feel like just another comedy or just another horror movie or another high school movie. It really felt like a truly crazy hybrid.

MM: Diablo is already known for her sharp tongue and distinctive style. How is it directing from someone else’s writing?

KK: For me I actually think it’s easier. If it’s not your own script, I think you are looking for something with a very strong point of view and this script, in my opinion, always had a very strong understanding of the characters and a really strong sense that the horror of the movie essentially came from the relationship between the two girls.

There was a sort of external horror that you could say was the genre quality of it, but I think a lot of good horror movies start with something more fundamental and basic. In this case it was this idea of a co-dependent, toxic teenage relationship that had run its course, that was over, that had very little to give either girl back, but somehow these two girls were weirdly lonely and needy enough to need each other still, despite the fact that they didn’t seem to relate to each other anymore.

MM: The protagonists of your past two features were female, and the main characters in Jennifer’s Body are also women. Do you intentionally try to showcase strong females characters?

KK: I don’t know if it’s intentional, I think I’m just drawn to that. That’s just stuff that ends up seeming more interesting to me, particularly with genre pieces. Girlfight was ultimately coming from a certain kind of spots movie tradition, and Æon Flux was coming from a sci-fi tradition and this movie is coming from a very, very skewed horror tradition. To me, oftentimes the reason those genres can get stale is because we keep watching them play out the same story and sometimes it’s interesting to see them switch it up when the question of gender enters the storyline.

MM: Do you gravitate toward a certain genre? Was it more difficult directing comedy?

KK: The comedy is one of those things you have to sort of work with a little bit longer to actually see if it’s playing. I can watch something as an individual and say, ‘This is funny,’ but it’s pretty interesting when you put the movie in front of an audience. Then you really know how the comedy is working or not working. The process is different, I guess.

I think with genre there is no particular favorite, although I do like a certain [type of] smart horror movie or smart suspense film. The one thing I am not very drawn to or couldn’t imagine myself doing is a more traditional romantic comedy.

MM: What would you say are some movies that inspired you to become a moviemaker or your favorite movies in general?

KK: Well, some of the movies that inspired me I obviously saw when I was younger and were special in a kind of spectacle way—whether it was the original The Wizard of Oz or the original King Kong—but those movies also occupy a place in my child fantasy brain. As I got older, I was watching movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Valley Girl; and eventually there was a run of Kathryn Bigelow movies during college like Near Dark, Blue Steel, Point Break. Those movies were important to me because I recognized the impulse toward craft at the same time the movies were occupying a specific kind of genre space.

But there are so many movies that have been intellectual to me and certain art films that were just so important to me like Todd Haynes’ Safe. And even when I look movies like Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low or Robert Rossen’s The Hustler, those were movies that taught me something bigger about character and storytelling and also just the visual approach. There have been a number of movies that remind me that the visual storytelling is a crucial component to a film, at least for me. Not for everybody, but for me.

MM: So you are definitely more visual. And you also write. You wrote Girlfight and now you are working on a political movie?