And just in time for True Blood to start shooting their new season. So, considering Anna Paquin’s busy schedule and despite being exhausted from working 12 – 14 hour days on the set of “Free Ride”, she was happy to sit down with Mina Asayesh-Brown, a high school student at Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, FL. The school has served as a set for the film and provided students to assist in various departments including help with the costuming.
Mina Asayesh-Brown & Anna Paquin
What attracted you to the project?
AP: My husband read the script and met with Shana and he basically said, out of curiosity, any particular reason my wife never read this script? It had never come across my radar, and she and I met, and as a woman in the film industry (I) could say there is a lack of really powerful strong female roles, especially ones that are not necessarily depicting perfect people being perfect and making great choices. And this is a story about a young single mother who’s just trying to survive and she’s making choices and doing things because it’s all she knows how to do at the time, and she’s not perfect but she’s doing the best she can, and those sorts of stories are sort of hard to get told. Shana is obviously writing about her own life experience, the character I’m playing is her mother, and it’s hard when you meet her not to be absolutely captivated by how much this all means to her.
What about the experience of independent filmmaking?
AP: One of the things about independent filmmaking is that you are very much reliant on the kindness of strangers. In this film, we have been incredibly fortunate to be taken under the wing of Ringling and (we’ve) been offered numerous students to help us in various departments at various points along the way in our production. When you’re shooting a film on a small budget you go on a hope and a prayer, so coming into this environment and finding an institution willing to help has been so unbelievable. . . . and the people who are just getting started, like the students at Ringling . . . there’s an enthusiasm that you just can’t replicate. You’ve studied it and learned about it, now you’re being thrown into it and doing it. One of the things I like most in my job is feeling inspired and working with people who have been doing it decades and decades longer than me.
On the set of "Free Ride"
How does working on this independent film compare with your work on True Blood with HBO?
AP: I love my TV show, it is the best job. HBO is an incredible place to work. It’s run by people who are humans first and studio execs second and who are supportive of various aspects of our personal interests, from philanthropic things to creatively what’s exciting and interesting for the team that puts their shows together. They allow us such freedom as creators and there’s really nothing like it. You have no ratings, so it’s not like the NC-17 is going to come down on you if you say a particular word too many times or show a particular thing too many times, but also contentwise we’re not being censored, which means that our show pushes boundaries. Independent film, in a weird way, is kind of the same thing, because you have complete freedom. It’s great either to have a big boss who’s able to facilitate and fund who gives you freedom, or to have no big boss at all. There (are) challenges to independent film where if you run out of time and you run out of money, there is no more time and there is no more money, and that’s a little scary. There’s all kinds of ways to tell stories, and I have a great love and great belief in the importance of independent film because it gives new and emerging voices — in the writer-director pool in particular — an opportunity to tell their stories.
What about the distribution of the film?
We are still working on that. (Laughs)
This is a great interview and there’s more to read, so check it out at the source.
