Interview: Nathan Silver Discusses How His Love for Paris Influenced His Latest Film, Thirst Street.

Director Nathan Silver brings his unique vision to the screen. In Thirst Street, a flight attendant Gina (Lindsay Burdge) moves to Paris after meeting and falling for Jerome (Damien Bonnard). Silver takes our expectations of rejection and obsessive love and turns them on itheir head in the film while creating a look with lighting inspired by 1980s cinéma du look. Add narration by Anjelica Huston, and Thirst Street becomes something quite different from a typical lover-scorned story. Nor it is another Gone Girl gone crazy. Heightened situations, well-developed characters, and a twist on the dreamy look of Paris is what makes Thirst Street such an interesting experience.

I caught up with Silver to discuss the influences and the ideas behind his latest film.

Where did you come up with the idea?

I wanted to make a movie with Lindsay Burdge as the lead as I had done a movie with her in a supporting role. I got back into town after shooting my previous movie, Actor Martinez, and I told my friend Chris about my desire to do this. It ended up he had written this script for her that he had never finished where she goes to Paris. The idea of Lindsay in Paris made a lot of sense to me, and we started toying around with different ideas of what that would be. I’ve lived in France twice in my life, once when I was 15 and again when I was 25. I just have this huge obsession with Paris. Also, Chris’ mother is a flight attendant and he’d heard some of her stories and so we put all of this in a blender.

I too, am in love with France and Paris. It created a very small sense of nostalgia. The visuals give that sense. What did you want to give viewers?

Some of the lighting ideas come from the ’80s cinéma du look movies. When the DP  (Sean Price Williams) and I were walking around the city we would see these insane colors popping up everywhere on buildings and statues. So, it started with this exaggerated notion we had of Paris from films then we would see it on the streets. Maybe there’s a sense of nostalgia because it’s inspired by films I saw when I was younger. It’s also about a character who loves old movies. Her idea of romance comes from musicals.

Regarding the look of the film, what I loved was that you had switched the looks. So in Paris, we get the not-so-soft look, and in the US portion of the films, we see the softer look. Talk about the conversation you had with Sean?

We figured we would switch it up and make Paris a bit harsher than the US, which is counter-intuitive. We liked this approach. Also, the US is in her rearview mirror so it is the past. It makes sense to have it softer.

Gina is quite a fascinating character. She’s old-fashioned in her sensibilities. How did you develop this?

I was born in 1983 and I come from a generation was raised with some old-fashioned notions: standard family stuff – ridiculous in its own way of course. But now, we have a generation where most definitions have been thrown out of the window, where nothing seems to have any shape or form except reactive anger on the internet and a flurry of mayfly opinions. I wanted to have Gina try and assimilate with the French and fail – just like I can’t assimilate with some really young folks… I try and understand them as best I can but most often I fail.

Let’s talk about the party scene where Gina is talking about the flight attendant? Talk about how you filmed that and what inspired that moment?

We shot that in one day. We didn’t do that many lighting adjustments. We hopped around and shot it frantically. There was actually a miscommunication that happened in the middle of the day and the French thought that us three Americans had taken acid. So throughout the day, the French were looking at us like we were crazy, but we were just crazy with the mania of getting through a lot of set-ups in a short time.

Having Anjelica Huston was priceless as a narrator. Did you guide her on the voice?

Yeah, it was a real coup to get her. All thanks to our producers at Washington Square Films. When I met with her in LA to record it, she got the tone very quickly. She took the first line and tried it in three different ways. By the third try, she gave us what we wanted and we flew through all of the text in half an hour.

There’s a great feeling of spontaneity in the films, and in this. Do you allow for much room to improvise?

Yes. All the dialogue is improvised. We had a 25-page treatment with all the beats written out but no dialogue. I’d give suggestions and see what happened. After a few on-set rehearsals, we’d get a feel for what we needed to make the scene work.

Was there a scene that was particularly hard to shoot?

The last day in Paris was a bit hard, not hard but delirious. We shot all the hospital scenes that day and I had awful food poisoning and could barely stand up I was so feverish. I’d take naps in between takes on one of the hospital beds.

What are the visual aspects that are important to you?

What bothers me about HD is that it’s a mediocre version of reality, whereas older formats distort reality. You really need to muck HD up with old lenses, filters, stockings, whatever you can. I want movies to distort life. In some of my earlier films, I was thinking I could make due with a naturalistic style, but now, I want there to be expressionism. I’m just fascinated with distorting reality maybe because we’re living in such a distorted version of reality these days. Or maybe I’m just bored with how my eyes take reality in. I don’t want the lens to just be an extension of my eyes.

What’s next?

Right now we’re editing a project we shot in June in NYC, which is basically the inverse of Thirst Street.  We brought some French folks over here. Jack Dunphy and I are continuing to edit and do reshoots on our movie The Pervert. I’m also writing some scripts.