Danielle Agnello Interview
A few weeks before the anticipated New York premiere of Danielle Agnello’s feature film directorial debut “Lime Salted Love,” IFQ sits down with Director/Actress/Screenwriter Agnello as she discusses her latest film, character development, Kristanna Loken and The Paperhat Group.
IFQ: Your film “Lime Salted Love” premieres at the New York International Independent Film & Video Festival (NYIIFVF) in February 2008. A few years ago, your short film “Worn Like A Tattoo” screened and won awards at the NYIIFVF. Tell me about your experience at the festival and the festival circuit, in general.
Danielle Agnello: It was an extremely fun and rewarding experience. It was very interesting to me to get to see how “Worn Like A Tattoo” effected the audience during the screening. I was very honored [with the awards] and it’s a wonderful thing when people are moved by your work. I was recovering from a severe car accident so I didn’t submit to any other festivals. A few weeks after the NYIIFVF, I began writing “Lime Salted Love,” and all my attention went to that.
IFQ: Why did you choose to independently create and produce your feature film directorial debut “Lime Salted Love”?
DA: I wanted to maintain creative control. I wanted to use the actors I wanted to use, and I wanted to tell the story that we wanted to tell.
IFQ: How did the concept of “Lime Salted Love” evolve?
DA: After I shot “Worn Like a Tattoo,” I was in a terrible car accident, that resulted in a coma,
multiple hospitalizations and psychiatric wards. The psych wards were completely horrific to me and malpractice at best. They just kept doping me up with a myriad of medicines for Post Traumatic Stress, and I had an adverse reaction and delved into severe pharmaceutical drug induced hallucinations. The only thing I remember is running up and down the corridors screaming and crying hysterically because I had no idea where I was. But then the medicines started to make me violently ill and I started throwing them up. As a result I abruptly snapped out of it, realized where I was and got the fuck out of there.
And for a young woman, I’ve experienced a lot but nothing shook me up like this. Before the hospitalizations, I had the beginning and the end of the story, but not the middle. But I found the middle of the story and it wasn’t about some girl in a car crash, it was about things we do to each other all the time. “Lime Salted Love” is about people so consumed with their own needfulness that any potential to help one another is destroyed. We often don’t strategically plan out how we are going to hurt someone. But even in a cruel world there is still so much hope, and we have the choice to become hope. And I think that a lot of people don’t realize how important life is and I felt a tremendous responsibility to do something about it.
So I called Joe and said, “I have to do something with my life or I am going to blow my fucking brains out—you want to do a film?” He said yes and I didn’t stop until we were done.
IFQ: “Lime Salted Love” is character driven. Why did you choose to focus on
character development?
DA: Personally, plot driven films do absolutely nothing for me. I find myself looking for films, songs, art that will touch and move me. There’s is nothing better then being inspired. In my art I aspire to show things as they are. If we deny something and say, “We don’t want to actually show you something painful, we want to just ‘portray’ painful,”—as an artist you are not doing your job. We are not neutral beings. We can shut off three fourths of our souls and make ourselves that way or we can use art as a medium to help people. This is why character development is so important.
IFQ: What are your personal thoughts on your character – Ellie?
DA: To me Ellie is an extremely vulnerable character. When you are a sensitive person living in a harsh world, you feel like there is no way you can exist with an open heart. I definitely relate to that. I also understand how deeply Ellie loves and how much she wants to trust. During the shoot, there was many times I had to go to places that left me feeling very raw and exposed.
IFQ: How was it working with Kristanna Loken—from a director’s point-of-view
and also, as your co-star?
DA: I absolutely loved working with Kristanna. There was nothing to not like.
Creating the red room scene with her was one of my favorite experiences ever.
In that scene she is dealing with the loss of her character’s innocence. She had to go to a genuine primal place. A façade can’t exist in a primal place, so in order for the scene to work she had to completely let go. Most actors either won’t or can’t do that. The red room scene is the heart of the film and she just nailed it. Her character Zephyr is outwardly so “together,” but the truth is she is on the verge of completely losing it. The first time you get a glimpse of her fragility was in a scene where she is reflecting back on her relationship with her family. There was this moment when she exhaled, very slowly and very eerily and her whole presence changed. By the time I called action on take two, I was shaking because her torment was so fierce and prevalent. Kristanna is a very charismatic actress and that’s something that can’t be learned.
IFQ: How did you get Kristanna on board in “Worn Like A Tattoo” and “Lime Salted Love?”
DA: We both met in an acting class we took with Silvana Gallardo and we became good friends.
We really respected and admired each other’s work. She knew I had shot “Worn Like A Tattoo” and wanted me to show it to her. So I did and she really liked it. I mentioned that there was one last character that I had to shoot for the story to be complete. She said that she wanted to do it. So we did.
Shortly after we shot, Kristanna got a job and had to leave L.A. So before [she left] I said, “Hey Kristanna, if I write a feature and you believe in it, would you do it?” She said, “Absolutely, after our first collaboration I don’t see why not; just show me the script when it’s finished.” Months later, I came over and read the script with her and she loved it. I was so excited.
IFQ: Also, you won a camera package from Panavision because they liked the script. Tell me more about this.
DA: I was submitting the script to various cinematographers and receiving their reels in the mail.
I wasn’t finding what I was looking for. So I submitted the script to Michael Goi (Vice President of the Cinematographers Guild) and I received a phone call from him two days later. He said, “I read the script, in fact I read it twice, and I want to shoot it.” I said, “That’s great, but we have no money yet.” He said, “I don’t care. ” He ended up watching “Worn Like A Tattoo” and he then proceeded to take the script to Panavision. They granted us the New Filmmakers Award, which was amazing. Michael Goi ended up not being able to shoot “Lime Salted Love” because of a scheduling conflict, but he oversaw the project. Michael’s tremendous belief in the project helped so much. He’s amazing.
IFQ: How long was the shooting schedule? Tell me about the production phase.
DA: We shot the film in 22 days. I don’t think I slept more then one hour a night for the entire shoot. I had no choice. There was too much that had to get done. During the shoot Joe and I were living in one tiny room in a tiny house all the way in the valley (Winnetka). He was sleeping on a cot and I was sleeping on a ridiculously small mattress. It was a very funny living situation, but that stuff doesn’t matter when you focus on something that really matters to you. On set, something is always going to go wrong, so you have to adapt quickly and make it work. A couple of times I had to secure locations the day before the shoot. Even with all the stress, that shoot was the best time of my life and such a fortunate way that I was able to finally reintegrate myself back into life from the car accident. We had a small, amazing team that worked very hard. I’m extremely grateful.
IFQ: Any memorable on-set stories?
DA: On the last day of our shoot, we wrapped and this one P.A. kept bragging about how he bought us a bottle of Dom Pérignon and kept reminding us how expensive it was and but it was so “worth it” to him because he wanted to show his appreciation for us. It wasn’t until a few days later that Joe realized that the P.A. had charged the bottle to Joe’s credit card.
IFQ: [Laughs] It’s always something!
IFQ: “Lime Salted Love” secured distribution. What qualities were you looking for upon signing with ITN
Distribution?
DA: ITN is a team of people who truly believe in “Lime Salted Love” and want to get it out there and know how to. We were looking for honesty, belief, experience, and an understanding of what it takes to sell a film. ITN just closed a deal with Japan and we’re very excited.
IFQ: Also, you run The Paperhat Group in LA. Tell me about it.
DA: The Paperhat Group is a theatre group and an acting class that I co-founded with George Castaneda. We use “The Approach,” which is a Stanislavski and Strasberg derived method. With a production side, George Castaneda and I founded it a year ago and have had over a hundred different actors that have called this studio home. Watching them work has inspired me as an actress and director. It is very purposeful.
IFQ: When was your first interest in film?
DA: I’ve been a writer my whole life so storytelling has always been a great interest. I realized that we could make films ourselves when I first met Joe. I would say my most influential artistic friend George Castaneda (who played SLINK in “Lime Salted Love”) inspired and taught me the most. He helped me learn how storytelling best translates cinematically and really reinforced just how powerful art can be.
IFQ: Who are your film inspirations?
DA: David Lynch, Allison Anders, Kurt Voss, Wim Wenders, Richard
Kelly, George Castaneda, Elia Kazan, Gus Van Sant and Paul Thomas Anderson.
IFQ: Any upcoming projects?
DA: We are currently working on “Misogyny’s Whore,” an original script by George Castaneda which is probably the greatest one I’ve ever read. I think we are going to blow people away with this great story of redemption. We feel very lucky to have found something with such potential to change people’s lives. You hate to speculate during early stages of production, but I think people are going to be very surprised.