Emma Seligman's Shiva Baby is exclusively showing on MUBI in some countries starting June 11, 2021 in the Debuts series.
Rare is the occasion for filmmakers to transform their short into a feature, and even rarer is it that both are met with obdurate success—especially when the product in question is a debut. Such, however, is the case for Emma Seligman and her NYU senior thesis short film, Shiva Baby—a high-octane embodiment of Murphy’s Law when college-aged Danielle finds herself at a Shiva where she is bombarded by the overwhelming presence of nagging relatives and also—her sugar daddy. Following the short’s debut at SXSW in 2018, it screened at a plethora of prestigious film festivals, including TIFF, London, and the Toronto New Wave Festival, where it won the Future of Film Award. Following in the footsteps of the short, the feature rendition of Shiva Baby premiered at SXSW 2020, and proceeded to storm the 2020 festival circuit, globetrotting from Deauville to Melbourne to TIFF, and ultimately took home Best US Screenplay at Outfest as well as Best Narrative Film at the Indie Memphis Film Festival.
To put it simply, Shiva Baby’s blistering success is well deserved. The feature-length expansion of the original short film transforms the already ambitious original narrative into an even darker, funnier, and deeper anatomical study of the story’s protagonist, Danielle; it is effectively a riff on a certain flavor of existential dread that is typically experienced by the socially conscious, clever, and auto-critical woman in her early 20s. This dread, niche as it may seem, is an even sharper reference point for those who find themselves at the intersection of queerness and Jewishness; ultimately, when considering the multivariable equation at hand, Shiva Baby gives us a calculated iteration of this precise kind of woman—in a state of undulating levels of anxiety as a result of trying to stave off both her sugar daddy and ex-girlfriend, all while bearing the remarks and criticism of those at the mourning ceremony.
The exploration of the diverse elements of Shiva Baby is done so in an unrestrained manner, giving life to a fresh and unforgivably feminist mode of storytelling. Perhaps what sets the film apart is the empathy that materializes behind the camera—one that consciously drags the audience down into Danielle’s comedy of errors, ingeniously demanding us to question the viewer’s role in the film. One of the byproducts, therefore, is a shared panic attack with the protagonist.
This steep cinematic bill cannot be written off as the product of hazard: Shiva Baby is the delicate handiwork of a tight-knit collaboration between Seligman and Rachel Sennott who plays Danielle. Their intellectual partnership, kindled in the production of the short film, ultimately gained momentum to bring the feature into fruition. I was able to catch up with both Emma and Rachel over zoom à la pandemic to discuss on-screen representation, the dynamics of their working relationship, and the mechanics behind the creation of such an enigmatic film.
NOTEBOOK: Shiva Baby is very much a character study of its protagonist, Danielle. I was wondering what your collaboration was like with Rachel—I know you were at NYU at the same time.
EMMA SELIGMAN: Yeah, Rachel and I met on the short film. I saw her in a couple other thesis films and then I asked her to audition, which sounds so funny looking back, like [fancy accent] "She auditioned for my short film, for my student thesis..." But that's how we met, and then we made the short, and I slowly, or I guess—pretty quickly understood that Rachel is a comedian and a writer as well, and we just really liked working together. And Rachel made the short so much her own. She just put such a stamp on it and made it really funny and specific to her voice. And then, Rachel became a huge motivator to seeing the feature film come to life. She's a Virgo, and was very intense in a good way... it was just nice to have someone that I could set goals with.
NOTEBOOK: That’s interesting because in watching the film, it almost seems at times like the role was almost written for her because she takes it on in such a genuine way. So then, Rachel, what did you bring to the character? Did you think you had to distance yourself from who you are to play her, or did you bring a lot of yourself to her? What was that balance like in playing Danielle?
RACHEL SENNOTT: I mean, Emma wrote the whole script. But because I was so lucky to be in the short film version and become best friends with her in the time where she was writing the feature, I got to read all these drafts, and I feel like we talked about the characters so much. There would just be times where we would talk about her on the phone.
EMMA SELIGMAN: Yeah.
RACHEL SENNOTT: And I do feel like I went through a somewhat similar journey to what Danielle goes through in like a day, over the course of like two years where I graduated college. I did feel that pressure from my family of—and my family is great and I love them—that pressure, that post-grad thing of like, "What's the plan? What are you doing?" and feeling insecure. I also went through a relationship where I felt like I learned a lot about the sexual power dynamics of how you think you have power and then you don't. So, I think that it was very natural in that way and I was really lucky. I don't think a lot of people have that experience and just having Emma be my best friend, I just feel like we talked so much about these things, so I felt really connected to Danielle by the time we started shooting the feature.
EMMA SELIGMAN: I will say though, because Rachel is being modest about how much Rachel connected to it. When you watch it, and then you know Rachel—what's so impressive is that, in terms of the themes and what she is feeling, Rachel can totally relate to that, but her demeanor is completely opposite from Rachel's. Danielle is super—I would say, introverted and shy and quiet, and kind of takes all the anxiety and lets it fester inside of her, and Rachel is so outgoing and energetic, and generally pretty positive, so it's really impressive for me to keep watching the film back and be like, [to Rachel] "that's so not you," because she’s obviously hilarious in it, but it's also a testament to what a good actor she is. It's just so not what Rachel is in so many ways. I just wanted to add that.
NOTEBOOK: Shiva Baby takes place over the course of one day. And I know you wanted to focus on a Shiva because of the different kinds of dynamics you have there with family and the different kinds of conversations that one would have, but why did you choose a single day of the Shiva rather than the entire duration of a Shiva?
EMMA SELIGMAN: I think I was sort of trying to continue with the framework of the short film and what I'd sort of a given a taste of with it. I think that creating your first feature is a super daunting process, and on one hand, I wanted to keep it to one location for budget, but in terms of the one-day idea, I think it was the best way to create an anxiety-pressure cooker situation. I think if Danielle was allowed to go to bed and sleep during the middle of it, it would have slowed—well, I don't know if it would have slowed it down, but it would have become a different movie, and I think I was very intent on keeping the walls closing in on her, and I felt like it needed to be just one day for that to happen.
NOTEBOOK: That makes a lot of sense with the anxiety. On both sides, then, how did you [Rachel] channel that anxiety: I know that people in this age group just are anxious as a personal trait, but how did you channel that for the film?
RACHEL SENNOTT: I was really lucky because the script is so good and Emma is such a fantastic director. It is a pressure cooker, it's all these things coming at her, but Emma worked with me on the script in terms of level of anxiety and charting a journey for her. We talked about power dynamics — who has the power in this scene, who is in the culture—and what level of "tweaking" she is at. Emma would just come over and would say "Yeah, you're at like, a ‘10’" and all of these elements are coming in, and that was really helpful. Like, I am a really anxious person but like Emma said, in a different way that Danielle is anxious. Emma is just a fantastic director and charting that out, especially because you don't shoot in order... And then you're going from your "victory scene" to falling apart, so that helped me so much and that was such an important role in crafting her journey and downfall.
NOTEBOOK: And Emma, it's not just that you were writing the anxiety into the dialogue of the script, but it also has a sort of lens—like an anxious lens. How did you achieve that, and maybe, what was your involvement in the editing process?
EMMA SELIGMAN: I feel like Rachel also was really receptive to just keeping the way that she was dealing with her anxiety very different, like whether she was trying to internalize it and keep up a strong face, or whether she was trying to subvert it and distract herself. I think that what was important was always keeping it different, like if she was just having a mental breakdown or if she was attacking somebody else with it. And in terms of the lens with it, I attribute a lot of that to our cinematographer, Maria Rucci, and our editor, Hannah Park. Maria also gave me a lot of her free time like Rachel did to figure out what the look of the movie was going to be, and we ended up deciding on a few anxiety-inducing films as references that we could have as short-hand, and create hopefully a different vibe of claustrophobia throughout. She was really eager to use anamorphic lenses because it curves the frame and has the walls caving in a bit, and then just using wider lenses so that everyone just looks distorted by a certain point, so that was really fun to do. And then I would say in the editing, we were really—this was just on a technical level—Hannah was editing the film as we were shooting. So she would assemble a scene super roughly, and we would be able to be like "Oh shit, we didn't get that." And because we were in the same house, we would be able to do that the next day or later. But she put an assembly together as we were shooting and then the film was done, and then I spent every day in the editing with her or night, and we just did it together. And I think the reason we have such a short run-time is just because we were trying to make it as anxiety-inducing or as tight as possible so nobody had any room to breathe, so it went from 95 minutes to 77 minutes, without us cutting much dialogue. We really only cut two entire moments or scenes—it was really just about taking the air out between people talking.
NOTEBOOK: Bisexuality on-screen is something that, even with the rapid evolution of queer on-screen content, is hardly portrayed. Or when we do, we only see one side of it. For example, if a bisexual woman is in a relationship with a guy, we see that aspect of her identity, or vice-versa, and there is rarely the opportunity to present a more global view of it. But Shiva Baby is one of the few instances in which we get to see two different sides of Danielle's sexual orientation. What was the development of the Maya storyline like in terms of writing?
EMMA SELIGMAN: I agree with you that we don't see too many bisexuals on-screen, or pansexuals... I'd say that that was the hardest thing to finesse within the movie in terms of the writing in it because too much would just feel like, "Woah, there's a lot of stuff going on at this shiva, she's just blowin' people in different rooms," [laughs] but not enough of the physical connection with Maya there would feel like I was slipping into queer-baiting, and I'm really tired, not tired– it's really hard to do. I'm not judgmental when I see like, a hand-holding when there's not [more], and it's hard with bisexual characters because you have to fit a lot in to make it clear, or to be able to sit in that sexuality versus just knowing that's a part of the character, which is also fine. I just think that it was trial-and-error with Maya, and I felt like it was important for her to be there for a few reasons, but especially so that it gave Danielle a little bit of hope, and gave the story just a little bit of air when it was needed throughout the movie, but I think that was definitely the trickiest part. Because too much made it hokey almost, and like, slapstick—if she had different lovers in different rooms—and not enough felt like yeah, queer-baiting, and just using it as a "And yeah! She's queer, makes-it-spicy," so that was tricky, but I think I had a lot of help from Rachel and our producers reading multiple drafts of the script to be able to hammer it out and decide what is the sweet spot.
NOTEBOOK: Also, the use of "Sugar-Babying" is an interesting and unique way to examine the power dynamics of a story. It is a rather common endeavor for college students these days, but it's also a very good way to show the power dynamics shifting. In the way that you crafted it, there is a very feminist angle. What is it like to both create and embody those shifting power dynamics?
EMMA SELIGMAN: I'm so glad that you call it a feminist perspective—that's great to hear, for sure. It feels really important to always create dynamic, complicated female characters who are handling the pressures being put upon them and acting on them either in ways that are good for them or bad for them, or empowering but that doesn't last long, or whatever it is, and I think that being a young woman in that position is such a messy time that I feel like a lot of people can relate to where you are just throwing things at walls and seeing what sticks. I felt like part of what prepped me for doing the short film was doing an independent study with my professor where he assigned me tons of films that were made about sex workers, and most of them are not portrayed positively, or they like, need the male savior, or they are the stripper-with-the-heart-of-gold. But there were a few that were like—even if they were directed by men—empowering and really badass, and I think that just informed how I approached Rachel and Danielle and Shiva, and I think it was trying to walk a fine line of it not being like, "I love sex and sex work and life is great and I am awesome," but also not it being like, "I'm a whore, I'm sad all the time," so finding the sweet-spot of it being an empowering job, an empowering position to be in, but one that comes with complications as well.
RACHEL SENNOTT: I think that for me, I want to play more characters like this. I love female characters that are messy and complicated and have all these different parts to them. You know, Danielle can make selfish decisions—that's the kind of character that I really want to play. So, I think that that's really important to me—portraying female characters that are like that.
NOTEBOOK: With the pandemic, I imagine your careers have changed a bit. What is next for you?
EMMA SELIGMAN: I would say that we're writing something for Rachel to star in and for me to direct that's definitely not Jewish—I need sort of a break from the Jewish personal anxiety, especially now because I'm living with my parents again. It's definitely more Rachel's style of absurdist, ridiculous humor, and it's very camp-y and fun and has shitty female characters—selfish female characters, I should say. It’s going to be much more of a broad comedy, but even still, it's very absurd and ridiculous and fun, and so I'm excited to do that as a break from making something that's all about anxiety. I’m just so excited.
