New York City-based filmmaker Lily Platt’s new short “Crisis Actor” made its debut at this year’s Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 25.
Platt’s film stars Sarah Steele as Celine, a chaotic aspiring actress who, after losing her day job, crashes an Al-Anon support group, meets a boy there (Philip Ettinger), and eventually has to come to terms with her compulsive need to lie.
This is Platt’s first film at Sundance. This year’s festival will be the last in Park City, Utah, before making the move to Boulder, Co. next year.
“I was totally delighted and honored,” she said. “I have really looked up to Sundance and Sundance filmmakers my whole life, so I’m just incredibly flattered and excited to go to Park City for the last one.”
I’m covering Sundance virtually this year and spoke with Platt about the making of her film. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I read that you kind of began your career in architecture and design. What prompted the switch to filmmaking?
Lily Platt: I did a lot of art history and cultural studies in undergrad, including some film stuff. I was really involved more in the curatorial side of architecture and design, and the putting together of exhibitions. It’s still visual storytelling, to an extent, so it was a natural progression for me, and my work in architecture design was almost like a bit of a detour from initial interest in filmmaking and a more academic interest in film. I started working in documentary film nonfiction producing after working in architecture, design, and curatorial work. So that was kind of an easy transition, just in terms of the nonfiction research side of things.
As you mentioned, it’s also a visual art form. How do you think having that sort of design background, if it has at all, has affected your directing style, coming off this first short?
Platt: Yeah, and I should clarify – I don’t have much of a studio background in architecture. I’ve taken some studio classes. But I do think an attentiveness to space and a distribution of space is really helpful with directing, in terms of even just like, location scouting – just looking at a potential location, being able to see the lines, how that will translate to a frame. I think that’s really useful. Also blocking actors, moving people through space, where to put the camera within a space. I think those are all really useful and applicable skills, in both kinds of ways of thinking.
Moving into the film itself, where did this idea initially stem from?
Platt: I made a short in my first year of NYU grad film about a woman who lies about a pregnancy and a planned abortion to try to manipulate her ex-boyfriend into caring for her for the afternoon. I really loved the character, and I loved the challenge narratively, and also in the edit, of revealing the lie, and how to do that most effectively. I just really kind of adored the character, and she stuck with me. “Crisis Actor” is kind of born out of that character.
Did you use any of the same actors, or did that evolve along the way?
Platt: Yeah, my cousin, the wonderful actor Ben Irving, played the boyfriend in “Child’s Play,” and he plays the student doctor who Celine comes on to in “Crisis Actor.”
The idea of that job, as an actor for medical students, was so specific. I assume you’ve come across that before? I didn’t even think of that as a job.
Platt: Yeah, a very dear friend of mine was in medical school at the time, and I was telling her I was developing this script about an actor, and she told me about actors she was working with in med school. You know, people who come in to help them learn how to diagnose people. I thought that was so funny. Like, what a great side hustle for a struggling actor.
And Sarah Steele, the actress in this film, is so funny. You can imagine someone wanting to wring the most drama out of that that they could, if they’re pretending to have cancer.
Platt: Yeah, totally. The actor in the scenario kind of delights in the travesty of disease and suffering. And that’s not so useful, necessarily, to the students who are looking for very specific diagnostic cues, you know? So it’s a funny conflict of interest.
I would love it if you could talk about finding Sarah, in particular. Also, I’m always curious, for directors early on in their careers, what the experience is like working with actors. You’ve talked about feeling like you had a solid background for the visual part of this – blocking, and making sure things fit in a space. But I’m curious how the relationship with the actors progressed.
Platt: I had been a big fan of Sarah’s for a long time, and I had most recently seen her in a play called “I Can Get It for You Wholesale” at the Classic Stage Company. I’d never seen her perform live before, but I was just really taken by her and approached her that way. And Phil [Ettinger], I had seen in a bunch of things, but most recently, this short “Safe,” by Ian Barling, this other NYU filmmaker. I reached out to him, and he actually had already worked with Sarah, so they had a foundation of mutual respect and trust, which I think is really important. We didn’t have a ton of time to rehearse, so in lieu of a formal rehearsal process, I ended up taking them to a dance class. We had dinner, we went to this dance class together, and we just spent a lot of time together. We spent a couple evenings together before going into the shoot, talking about the characters, talking about the film.
I just got so lucky. Working with actors of that caliber makes your job so much easier. I was just kind of blown away by their ability to one, modulate their performance across takes, but also just to bring a really, really, really strong performance from the get-go. I was definitely intimidated to work with both of them. They were so generous, and again, just made the job incredibly easy, but also challenging.
I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen Sarah before, but I remembered seeing Phil in a movie called “Little Brother” a couple of years ago. I thought he was excellent.
Platt: Phil is an incredible, incredible talent.
You spoke about directing your student film at NYU, but coming onto this particular shoot, what was the most challenging aspect of directing for you?
Platt: I think just the scale. This was a bigger film for me. The last film I directed before this was three actors, one location, three days. [On this film], my first day was the Al-Anon scene, and that was 15 actors, many of whom were my close friends and family members and family friends. So that was really intimidating [laughs]. I got really turned around. But that’s how you grow, is just putting yourself in situations like that. I’m so glad that I did do that, because now I feel like I can do a support group scene, and I can do a bigger group of people. But you don’t think about how that’s a big leap, even being in a room with many more people. It’s just about your attention span, you know?
In addition to the scale, I can imagine having friends and family members was more difficult – trying to be in a position of authority around people you know, them watching you at work, basically.
Platt: Yeah, it was. Also, they were doing me a huge favor. They were coming to Staten Island at like, 4 in the morning. So I also felt really indebted to them. They were so generous, and happy to do it. But I just felt like I had to do a really good job, because they were donating their time. It pushes you to be on your game. But with low budget filmmaking, you’re kind of in that position often, where you have to rely on your friends and family to help you.
As far as the timeline goes, when did you initially start working on the script, and how much did it change from when you had that initial draft to the first day of shooting?
Platt: It didn’t change a whole lot. I did a lot, a lot, a lot of drafts, but it was really just tweaking dialogue. It was paring things down pretty dramatically. I wrote the script in September, early October, and our first day of shooting was November 17, 2024.
Jumping off of that, when you brought the actors in – you mentioned you spent time talking with them about the characters and about the short leading up to shooting – how does that affect character, bringing an actor’s personality into something that you’ve already written? How did those things meld and evolve?
Platt: I think that for Celine, the character read – not that I think the goal should be likability, necessarily – but the character read quite unlikeable. There was almost a cynicism. In my work with Sarah, I think it was really important for us to define her as someone who was incredibly willful, determined, charismatic, strategic. And maybe the manifestation of those things was immoral or nefarious, but she has a lot of really admirable qualities as a character, and I think that is important. As an actor, you don’t judge your characters, and as a director, you shouldn’t either.
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