WAMG Interview: Actress Grace Zabriskie – Star of Twin Peaks and THE MAKINGS OF YOU

Actress Grace Zabriskie has worked with such powerhouse directors as David Lynch, Gus Van Sant, and William Friedkin. Now she has come to St. Louis to co-star in THE MAKINGS OF YOU, the feature debut of Matt Amato, acclaimed director of a variety of music videos. THE MAKINGS OF YOU tells the story of Judy (Sheryl Lee) and Wallis (Jay R. Ferguson), who share dissatisfaction with their own lives and an irresistible attraction to each other. Caught between the freedoms offered by Wallis and the demands of her troubled family, Judy struggles to reconcile the two. Deftly avoiding romantic clichés, THE MAKINGS OF YOU is a classic love story rich in atmosphere — palpable summertime heat, lush music, and beautifully decaying surroundings. Grace Zabriskie plays Sheryl Lee’s mother, a role she has played before in the TV series Twin Peaks. Grace, along with costar Jay R. Ferguso

Grace Zabriskie took the time to talk about her life, her career, and THE MAKINGS OF YOU

Interview conducted by Tom Stockman November 6th 2014

We Are Movie Geeks: I’m so glad of that you’ll be here next week for the big premiere of MAKINGS OF YOU.

Grace Zabriskie: Yes, I cannot wait.

WAMG: Have you seen the finished film yet?

GZ: Yes, I’ve seen it through many incarnations.

WAMG: Had you spent much time in St. Louis before you filmed that here?

GZ: No I had not, but every Christmas for the past 20 years Matt (Amato, the film’s director) goes back to St. Louis and he always calls me and I talk to his whole family, who I have met many times when they visited him in L.A., and they always say I should come to St. Louis and visit but I never have been able to tear myself away and get there. But as soon as I got there to film MAKINGS OF YOU, I felt like I had been there many times. It was amazing.

WAMG: How did you know Matt?

GZ: I’ve known him for 20 years. I knew him because we had a mutual friend and Matt has been trying to get a script to me for a long time. I think they were early drafts of the film that we finally did.

WAMG: MAKINGS OF YOU was his first feature film as a director. You’ve worked with a lot of directors. What kind of job do you think he did?

GZ: I have worked with a lot of directors, and what Matt did was work with his own instincts and that, above anything else, is what I have come to prize most in a director. Someone who isn’t doing things according to some, usually rather imperfectly understood way to do things. It’s amazing how often you find that, working with someone who want you to do things a certain way and then you realize that they don’t really have a good reason for that. They don’t even understand the reason, they just know that’s how it’s done. Matt had to been working in film and directing and writing and editing for many, many years, mostly on music videos, so he had begun to see the world in terms of music on a really profound level.

WAMG: Was he open to ideas from you and Sheryl and Jay about your characters or did he stick to the script?

GZ: He was completely open to ideas, almost to a fault. Some of the other actors would suggest alterations before they had even tried what Matt had written. I am a huge advocate of starting with the page until there is a reason not to, until your understanding of what is trying to be done tells you that there is a way to do it even better, not second-guessing what a character might say. To me, that’s my job, to make his lines work.

WAMG: In the MAKINGS OF YOU, there is a scene where you are listening to an old LP. I believe that is your character as a younger woman.

GZ: That’s right.

WAMG: Was that your voice?

GZ: No, But there are moments in the film where you hear her speak to her grandsons in a way that makes it very clear that she’s savvy about music and that it’s always been her thing, But it’s easy to miss.

WAMG: I know that in addition to acting you like to paint and sculpt and write poetry. Have you ever performed music before?

GZ: I have had to get up and perform a song to be for a role before and I said to Matt that I was willing to perform a song but I didn’t want him to just spring it on me. I wanted to work on it. I have to get up in it. He tried to get me to do it the way I was afraid he was going to make me do it, and I dug my heels in so he found something, he found the perfect music for the scene. There’s no music that he doesn’t know or can’t find.  I sent MAKINGS OF YOU to a friend of mine who I met doing another film called ONLY CHILD. She said that she had been able to fall into the pace of the film and practically had a beatific experience. The way she described it, she realized that the film made her appreciate Memphis, where she had spent a lot of time. I’ve talk to people who, if they’re in the wrong the mood, the film is just too slow for them. But if they’re in the right mood with the expectation of slowing down a little bit, they were able to return to that place in their lives that was slow, not rushed.

WAMG: It made St. Louis look like a sleepy, small town in some ways.

GZ: Yes, in some ways it’s a St. Louis that exist only in the imagination and somewhat in the past. It seems to exist in an interesting time, doesn’t it? It doesn’t seem today yet it doesn’t seem relentlessly period.

WAMG: Yes, he was clearly going for a timelessness quality and succeeded. You played Sheryl Lee’s mother two decades ago on Twin Peaks. Was playing her mother again in this film a coincidence?

GZ: It was, though we have played mother and daughter at least one other time between these projects. It was something that neither she nor I can remember the name of.

WAMG: It would be easy to look up.

GZ: Well it’s not something she or I deliberately leave on our resumes.

WAMG: We’ll leave it at that then. What inspired you to enter a career in the arts when you were growing up?

GZ: I grew up in New Orleans, in the French Quarter, but I don’t think I have had that moment, that moment that some people describe when they knew they wanted to be an actor, or they realized they wanted to write, or whatever. From the time I was three years old, I knew I was going to be a teacher. All four of my grandparents and many of my aunts and uncles were teachers and that’s just what I knew I was going to be. But I read widely and inappropriately at a young age and at some point I decided I would write and do visual arts and act as an amateur. Now it’s turned out that I do all those things as a profession and I teach as an amateur.

WAMG: What other type of art that you do brings you pleasure?

GZ: I’m a woodworker. That’s the direction my visual arts has taken me now. It seems that every 10 years or so it takes some new form. I’m making furniture and sculpting with wood now.

WAMG: Do you find that relaxing?

GZ: No. I don’t look at it as a hobby. It’s something I need to do when I do it.

WAMG: What is your next project?

GZ: There are several films I’m in that are still to come out. When I finished the last one in the March or April, I told my agent that I wanted to do no more films for the rest of the year so I can just stay in my woodshop. I was just in THE JUDGE with Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall and there’s a couple of others.

WAMG: Will you be involved in the Twin Peaks reboot that they are talking about?

GZ: Yes, apparently so, but I’m not sure exactly in what capacity. I know so many people who never watched television until Twin Peaks premiered.

WAMG: I’ve always enjoyed you in films. My favorite Grace Zabriskie part was when you played Matt Dillon’s mother in DRUGSTORE COWBOY. He comes over and you hide your purse. You played that so perfectly.

GZ: Thanks

WAMG: Good luck with MAKINGS OF YOU and I’ll see you at the premiere next week.

GZ: Thank you, I’m so looking forward to it.