by Larry Richman
March 19, 2008 8:38 PM

The World Premiere of Explicit Ills took place on Saturday, March 8 at the 2008 SXSW Film Festival. Earlier, I posted my review. After seeing 20 films, I chose Explicit Ills as one of my 3 Top Picks of this year's festival.

Explicit Ills is simply a masterpiece. I sat with stunned silence as the film ended, both in wonderment at what director Mark Webber has been able to achieve as well as in deep thought about what my own role has been in the betterment of society. Explicit Ills will definitely make you think. Whether or not it will lead you to act on your thoughts is up to you.

Frankie Shaw and Lou Taylor Pucci play Michelle and Jacob, a young couple lost in the throes of romance and the haze of drugs. They do both to great excess. I had the great pleasure of sitting down with these two wonderful young actors to discuss Explicit Ills as well as the festival experience in general.

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LR: We’re talking with Frankie Shaw and Lou Taylor Pucci from the movie Explicit Ills which had its World Premiere here at the 2008 SXSW Film Festival this weekend. Why don’t you guys start off by telling me a little bit about your characters?

Frankie: I play Michelle. She is a well-off art student in Philadelphia, and she falls madly, intensely, crazily, addictively in love with her drug dealer. She lost her mom the year before and she’s just sort of coasting on this drug-induced obsessive…she’s very obsessive about her painting, her art, which she’s not able to really produce when she’s doing her drugs. So she’s in limbo at the beginning of the film and they fall in love and sort of have this little intense adventure together.

Lou: I play Jay, or Jacob. He also lost his mom, we find out, so that’s one of the things that I guess sort of connects us, but we were connected before that. But you never really know about his parents. You don’t know whether he was well-off or not. You think he probably wasn’t. You know he’s selling drugs and he’s a bike messenger selling drugs around Philadelphia so he probably doesn’t have any money. You don’t ever know where he lives. He’s always at her place because she’s got more money, so I don’t think you even ever see him wearing anything else than one pair of clothes…two pairs of clothes…so he always looks okay. He can keep himself up but he’s probably not got any money at all and I think that’s how he connects to the film mostly. What I mean is that he’s kind of living in poverty too. We form this intense relationship and he’s trying to deal with it as best he can but it becomes so much about the drugs. We’re on drugs for the entire film almost, except for the first scene we meet and the last scene that we’re in.

Frankie: And I think in the first scene I’m wasted.

Lou: Yeah, and you’re wasted and I might have smoked this morning. We are definitely druggies, and by the end of it we kind of have to choose drugs or our relationship certainly.

LR: I saw the film and it’s almost as if your storyline…your relationship isn’t even divided by days. It’s like it starts and just flows through the whole movie. You can’t even tell, “are these guys ever sober or straight?”

Frankie: Yeah, and I think that’s representative of what’s it like when you fall in that kind of love. You don’t differentiate between days.

Lou: When you’re on drugs, too.

Frankie: And when you’re on drugs.

Lou: When you’re on drugs you just don’t realize that it’s yesterday or today or whatever it is. It’s just like this great thing.

Frankie: Right, and I feel like what was so cool about how we were directed to play these roles was that we weren’t…you see a lot of movies and you’re so drugged out and you’re nodding off. It’s about that…the performance is about being f---ed up…but for us it was, “how are we going to make us falling in love real?” And the drugs were just part of it.

Lou: We would rehearse normal first. We would rehearse it as if we weren’t on drugs first and then we’d kind of put the drugs into it.

LR: Oh that’s interesting.

Lou: At least a couple of times I know that we did that. Because I think it’s better that way, because then you really get what’s real out of it first, and then you put all this s--- on top.

LR: Wow, that’s excellent. So how did you come into this project?

Frankie: I met Mark on a movie, my first movie, called Just Like the Son. And in the first composition we had we’re supposed to be rehearsing the scene, and he was like, “I’m writing this script and it’s about my life, and it’s about drugs and poverty and love, and you should read it,” and you know he was just like… this was like the bare bones draft… so that was when I first heard about it. And then he finished it in March of last year and got the funding, and then I think I read it in the summer.

Lou: When I found out how quick everything had happened…

Frankie: It was crazy.

Lou: I was like, “no way, how did you do that?” I mean, he worked really hard but it was a lot of luck, too.

Frankie: It’s only Mark Webber who can get that much money...

Lou: He knew so many people who could help, and everybody was so nice and did help. But some movies have the same type of people behind them and they take six years to make instead of two.

LR: Had you guys seen this final cut before the other night?

Lou: No.

Frankie: Not the final cut.

Lou: That’s where I was really taken aback.

LR: Now without giving too much away for the people who haven’t seen the movie, there are several storylines which are distinctly separate. Is it safe to assume that you guys weren’t on set for all those other actors?

Lou: Yeah, we weren’t.

LR: So it must have been like watching somebody else’s movie, aside from your own…I guess it must be hard to watch your own work onscreen.

Lou: I was really happy to see so much that wasn’t me.

LR: So what did you guys, as audience members, think of the movie? Or at least of the rest of the movie?

Frankie: First there are moments where I’m like, “this is such a bizarre movie,” but I love that. Like you watch a film and say, “what the hell is going on?” but you fall in love with it, so there was that. But then I loved each storyline for different reasons, and I loved how there didn’t seem to be a superfluous moment in the movie and yet it seemed to be just full of random slices of life. So it was like going through and just being like, “oh, that’s in there because of this,” just understanding it like that. That was amazing how they all ended up connecting.

Lou: Well I was totally blown away. I was totally blown away.

LR: I saw you afterwards, and I’m not sure I’ve ever been to a movie where the actors were present where I’ve run into one of the actors afterwards who have that look that you had on your face. You were just dumbfounded.

Lou: I know, I was really dumbfounded. I was almost going to cry when I was up on the stage because it was just so much. I just couldn’t believe that it worked, that it all worked, that he got so many good people to do that movie, just so many. Not just the actors, but…the editing is so good. The editing is so intensely good that it just brings everything together so much. The sound of that movie…the music is some of the best music that could ever tie that movie together. I think it’s the best it could have been. I was totally taken into the entire film as if I hadn’t read it before, and I wasn’t watching it like I was watching me even. They cut so much of our dialogue that was just unnecessary and generic, or funny, or interesting just to be interesting or just normal or realistic. They cut that stuff so it was only the bare essentials of what was really our relationship and what we were really trying to show, and that was beautiful. I really just loved all of it. And what I could not believe is that, even though it made you cry, you can’t believe that in the end you feel good, that it’s actually positive in the end. And I could not believe how well that ending was edited, too, because they had so much film to use and they used so little of it and it was just the perfect amount. So I was really just blown away by the fact that it all worked.

LR: And, for me, when it finally does come together at the end there isn’t a lot of dialogue that does that. It’s all done with visuals.

Lou: What was so cool about the editing, with the slices of life and everything, was it all seemed to actually be put together. I didn’t even feel like there was anything weird about it. I didn’t feel like this is a strange film. I just watched it and it all seemed to fit perfect. So for some reason it hit me just the right way. I got exactly why everybody didn’t know each other, or did, or you didn’t really care…you’re just trying to figure out who these people are.

Frankie: It made so much more sense seeing it than it did for me reading it. You know sometimes you understand why things are the way they are but, seeing it, it all came together. Which goes to show that Mark knew what he was doing more than any of us, which is how it’s supposed to be, but that was cool.

Lou: That is just genius. It was just really amazing.

LR: So as far as the future of this film is concerned, festivals? Distribution?

Lou: I hope it’s going to be everywhere, you know what I mean? But who knows?

LR: Has there been interest? I know it just had its World Premiere here.

Frankie: Yeah, there are some people who were here.

Lou: I heard there were a lot of distributors in the audience.

Frankie: I think a lot of people spoke up after and talked to our producers about it. And hopefully it will go to more festivals. We can all hang out some more.

LR: Have either of you been here to SXSW?

Lou: I wanted to come here so bad. I’ve been wanting to come here for two years ever since I found out about the place. I had no idea that Austin had a film festival before two years ago, but then when I did I was like, “oh my God.”

Frankie: It’s the coolest festival.

Lou: And it is so good. It’s so cool.

Frankie: It’s just full of young people trying to do their thing. You just feel a community here a lot more than some of the bull--- that goes on at some of the other festivals.

Lou: You walk out of your film and you walk down the street and have a beer and nobody bothers you.

LR: So we’ll be looking for Explicit Ills at future festivals or hopefully it will get picked up so soon that it won’t even need to be at a festival.

Frankie: At a theater near you.

LR: At a theater near you.

Lou: Oh yeah.

LR: Thanks a lot guys.