Interjecting, a questioner asked why he cast Michael and what qualities made him perfect for the role:
Sebastián Silva: We were going to shoot this other movie, Magic Magic, but we were waiting because the finance kept getting delayed. Michael had to go back home from Chile, because he was there learning Spanish for Magic Magic. We were waiting about three months for financing, and Michael said “Buddy, I’ve been here for three months, I’m just going to go back home. I’ll be back whenever we get the money.” Then I thought about Crystal Fairy, I talked to Gaby Hoffmann, I talked to a producer, and it happened immediately. Michael is a great actor, he’s the right age for the character, he knows me really well (not that he’s playing myself entirely, but there were some aspects of myself), and I just wanted to make a movie with Michael. We needed to make a movie, and it was the perfect opportunity. It was just serendipity.
Tonally, Crystal Fairy is somewhat of a chameleon, so we asked Sebastian if it’s fair to lump his film into any sort of genre:
Sebastián Silva: I never think that’s fair unless a movie is made from the beginning as a genre movie. To classify a movie with a genre frames it unfairly, but I think it is a road trip comedy. People tend to be laughing more than they’re crying or being horrified. I think it’s a comedy. You know, there’s that scene where Michael goes into the bathroom, he’s just done cocaine, then he takes a shit, the turd is floating in the toilet – that’s really just broad comedy. Like, it’s poop, floating in a toilet [Laughs].
Michael Cera: It’s classic…
Sebastián Silva: It is! It’s classic comedy – feces. Yeah, it’s definitely a comedy, it’s the most comedic movie I’ve ever made. Like The Boring Life Of Jacqueline, wich also contains a lot of genres, it’s comedy. I’m laughing about tragedy. I’m laughing about things constantly. I think comedy is fair, but it has a little bit of everything.
We then asked Michael if there was anything he wanted people to take away from Crystal Fairy:
Michael Cera: I really wasn’t that conscious of an audience when we were making the movie, because it was really just an earnest little vacation we were all on together. I just thought it’d be great if anyone ever sees this movie, and if those people could tap into how much fun we were having making it. It was really so much fun to make. I remember just thinking I’d be so surprised if anyone had strong feelings against this movie, it’s just made so pure heartedly.
Sebastián Silva: Yeah, they would suck. They would be evil people.
Next we asked Michael’s thoughts on method acting, and if he stays in character even after shooting finishes:
Michael Cera: No, I never really do that…
Sebastián Silva: [To Michael] That would be really annoying if you did that, right? It’d be so off-putting…
Michael Cera: Yeah, I don’t know. Daniel Day-Lewis – I don’t know the reason as to why he does it…
Sebastián Silva: Maybe because he wants people to talk about it later [Laughs].
Michael Cera: I don’t know why people do that. Maybe so that every impulse you have when you’re in a take isn’t your own – you develop the impulses. But no, I’ve never really experimented with that.
In Crystal Fairy, Gaby Hoffmann delivers an amazing performance and spends most of the film disrobed, so someone asked Michael what it was like working with a “naked actress” for so long:
Michael Cera: I never thought of her as a naked actress [Laughs]. I just thought of her as an actress with her clothes off. It never made me uncomfortable. Gaby is so comfortable with her nudity, and I would never be uncomfortable unless she was having a hard time and I was feeling for her. But no, it was totally fine. It was so familial, the whole thing, and I love those scenes. They’re such fun scenes that just play the strangeness of the situation, it’s just great fun. I don’t even think Gaby covered up between takes…
Sebastián Silva: Nope, she was just hanging out there…
Since Crystal Fairy had so much improvisation, we asked if all the improvising changed the tempo on set and off the set:
Michael Cera: Hanging out all day effects the scenes. We all had such comfort with each other, and we’d all been spending time together before we started to shoot, so that just feeds into learning each other’s rhythms conversationally, and how to play off of that.
Sebastián Silva: Yeah, a good example is the “What would you rather” game. That was a game we would do off camera, that’s a game we would play on the road – then it became something in the movie. I think there’s a lot of those kind of details.
In Crystal Fairy, there’s an extremely beautiful animated opening that Silva uses, so we wanted to know where that idea came from, as well as Michael Cera’s bushy haircut:
Michael Cera: That was just what my hair was looking like at the time [Laughs]. I was just in Chile not cutting it.
Sebastián Silva: Yeah, we never talked about it, but I guess at some point he was like “What are we going to with the hair,” and I was like “No! Leave it!” That was great hair, it was amazing!
The opening sequence was done by the same guy I work with on all my movies for my credits. He has this little boutique design production housing team. I kind of left it up to him though. I told him I wanted something sober but yet fun and a little old fashioned, and he came up with those credits. The music is so epic, and it seems like you’re going to watch a really big movie, but then the movie is really so tiny and starts so small – but the music and the credits feel really epic. At the beginning we were thinking about doing stuff with crystals, and we were going through a crazy brainstorm, but then he proposed that – and I loved it.
Getting away from Crystal Fairy, we asked what they both were planning on doing next:
Sebastián Silva: I want to make a movie set up in Brooklyn where I live, Fort Greene. We’re probably going to shoot at my place, it’s the main location, and then within four blocks. Bars, a roller rink, whatever. It’s called Nasty Baby, and it’s about a gay couple and their straight female friend wanting to have a baby together, so they’re trying to have a baby. On the other hand, this homeless person, a borderline squatter, moves into the neighborhood and starts terrorizing everybody around him, especially one of the main characters. Those two stories mix, and it’s more dramatic I guess. It has comedy, but I think technically it would qualify as a drama. It’s in the same fashion of Crystal Fairy. It has no screenplay, there’s only a small outline.
Michael Cera: I’m not sure myself. Just trying to find the next thing.
Thanks to both Sebastián Silva and Michael Cera for participating in this roundtable interview, and be sure to check out Crystal Fairy in theaters, which is out now!
